UC-NRLF 


LINCOLN 

The  World  Emancipator 
BY  John  Drinkwater 


GIFT    OF 
JANE 


LINCOLN 
THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 


LINCOLN 

THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 


BY 


JOHN  DRINKWATER 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK. 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

Rtoers'iDe  prc0 
1920 


COPYRIGHT,   1920,   BY  JOHN  DRINKWATER 
ALL   RIGHTS    KBSKKVED 


To 


43C910 


CONTENTS 

I.    'LIBERTY*  I 

II.  1E  PLURIBUS  UNUM'  13 

III.  ANGLO-AMERICAN  UNION  27 

IV.  LINCOLN  AS  SYMBOL  39 
V.  ANGLO-AMERICAN  DIFFERENCES  (I)  51 

VI.  ANGLO-AMERICAN  DIFFERENCES  (II)  63 

VII.  LINCOLN  AS  RECONCILER  75 

VIII.   HISTORY  AND  ART  85 

IX.  LINCOLN  AND  THE  ARTISTS  97 

X.  AN  EPILOGUE  109 


I 

LIBERTY' 


LINCOLN 

THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 
I 

<  LIBERTY ' 

LINCOLN,  the  world  emancipator.  It  is  a 
significant  phrase,  having  surely  an  air  of 
reality  for  those  who  know  the  story  of 
the  man.  Among  all  men  in  the  modern 
history  of  the  world  there  is  none  who 
has  so  persuasively  that  magnetic  union 
of  mastery  and  sympathy  that  fills  our 
minds  when  we  think  of  the  spiritual 
liberator. 

Intimately  of  the  world,  yet  unsoiled 
by  it ;  vividly  in  contact  with  every  emo 
tion  of  his  fellows  and  aware  always  of 
the  practical  design  of  their  lives;  always 
lonely,  brooding  apart  from  all,  yet  alien 
ated  from  none — Abraham  Lincoln,  pio 
neer,  citizen,  country  lawyer,  astute  poli- 


\$  :    Tk&  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

tician,  and  incorruptible  statesman,  stands 
readily  enough  in  the  alert  imagination 
as  a  new  symbol  of  regenerative  power. 
Already,  half  a  century  after  his  death, 
the  mind  of  man  perceives  in  this  single- 
hearted  champion  of  a  moral  idea  a  figure 
to  whom  all  sorrows  and  ambitions  may 
be  brought,  a  touchstone  by  which  every 
ideal  of  conduct  may  be  tried,  a  witness 
for  the  encouragement  of  the  forlornest 
hope. 

'Character  is  fate/  said  the  Greek, 
and  character  remains  for  us  the  only 
true  inspiration.  He  who  most  com 
pletely  realizes  himself  is  he  who  most 
fitly  assumes  leadership  of  men,  not  only 
in  the  days  of  his  life  on  earth,  but  in  the 
story  that  he  becomes  thereafter.  -And  for 
nearly  two  thousand  years  there  has  been 
no  man  of  whom  we  have  record  who 
has  so  supremely  realized  himself  to  the 
very  recesses  of  his  being  as  this  Amer 
ican,  Lincoln.  Rightly  envisaged  in  the 


LIBERTY 


universal  imagination,  he  might  well  be 
come  the  world's  emancipator.  But,  be 
fore  we  consider  further  his  aptness  to 
this  end,  let  us  ask  ourselves  what  eman 
cipation  means,  and  from  what  power  it 
is  that  we  need  emancipation. 

I  am  speaking  now  as  an  Englishman 
among  Americans.  The  thousand  details 
of  domestic  policy  that  beset  this  coun 
try,  as  every  other,  are  not  my  concern. 
I  can  form  fleeting  and  casual  impressions 
of  their  nature,  but  I  am  not  so  simple 
as  to  be  guilty  of  the  impertinence  of 
passing  judgment  upon  them.  The  inter 
nal  machinery  of  a  nation's  affairs  is 
that  nation's  own  business,  and  we  in 
England  have  learned  enough  by  the  ex 
ample  of  certain  busy  visitors  presuming 
to  teach  us  the  way  to  carry  our  own 
coats  to  avoid  a  like  rashness  and  abuse 
of  hospitality.  So  that  of  the  local  differ 
ences  between  us  I  have  here  nothing  to 
say. 


6      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

These  are  the  things  that  do  much  to 
make  up  the  charm  of  a  holiday  journey, 
to  be  observed  with  good  humour  and 
respect.  But  moving  among  American 
people  I  am  daily  more  and  more  aware 
that  underneath  all  external  differences 
there  is  a  profound  unity  of  being  in  our 
two  races,  that  the  problems  confronting  us 
are  largely  the  same,  and  that  any  supreme 
figure  that  can  be  found  to  stand  for  an 
•, .  inspiration  to  either  of  us  may  very  rightly 

>\    so  stand  to  both.  And  if  Lincoln  should 

i 

prove  to  be  such  a  figure,  then  we  in 
England  should  be  proud  and  happy  if 
we  could  do  something  towards  the  dis 
covery,  rejoicing  without  any  envy  that 
he  rose  in  Illinois  and  not  from  one  of 
the  counties  ot  the  Thames  or  the  Tweed. 
I  look  at  a  handful  of  American  coins. 
On  all  alike  I  find  one  of  two  legends  — 
'Liberty'  and  <E  Pluribus  Unum.'  The 
pressure  of  life  may  sometimes  a  little 
take  the  edge  off  your  realization  of  the 


LIBERTY 


fact  that  your  emblem  is  Liberty  and  of 
the  true  meaning  of  your  *  E  Pluribus 
Unum,'  just  as  we  in  England  too  often 
forget  what  we  mean  when  we  say  that 
*  Britons  never  shall  be  slaves/  But,  how 
ever  dulled  our  recollection  may  become, 
the  fact  remains,  and  it  is  a  fact  of  strange 
beauty:  the  American  and  British  nations 
alike  have  at  the  very  roots  of  their  struc 
ture  the  profoundly  mystical  idea  of  the 
coexistence  of  individual  liberty  and  na 
tional  unity,  an  idea  exquisitely  expressed 
in  those  two  inscriptions  on  your  five-cent 
piece.  In  defence  of  that  mystery,  and  for 
no  other  possible  righteous  cause,  the  two 
countries  have  but  yesterday  borne  arms 
together.  And  in  the  play  that  I  wrote, 
the  mission  that,  in  introducing  my  theme, 
I  outlined  as  being  Lincoln's,  was  to 

Make  as  one  the  names  again 
Of  Liberty  and  Law. 

It    is    significant  that    I  wrote   those 
words  long  before  I  realized  how  exactly 


8      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

is  the  spirit  of  them  in  the  inscriptions 
on  the  currency  that  passes  among  you 
every  moment;  wrote  them  merely  out 
of  my  perception  of  the  idea  that  Lin 
coln  and  the  fine  flower  of  American 
democracy  stand  for. 

Individual  liberty  and  national  unity. 
What  is  individual  liberty,  as  conceived 
in  the  best  democratic  thought,  the  best 
thought,  that  is,  in  America  and  Eng 
land  to-day?  Let  us  look  at  the  facts 
honestly,  and  go  back  if  needs  be  to  sim 
ple  beginnings. 

And  first  let  us  get  away  from  the 
notion  that  the  real  democratic  idea  is 
that  one  man  is  as  good  as  another.  If 
the  word  '  good '  has  any  plain  meaning 
at  all,  it  is  manifestly  absurd  to  say  that 
Bill  Sykes  was  as  good  a  man  as  George 
Washington,  or  that  George  the  Third 
was  as  good  a  man  as  William  Shake 
speare.  The  true  democratic  idea  is  not 
that  one  man  is  as  good  as  another,  but 


LIBERTY 


that  in  natural  privileges  and  opportunity 
one  man  shall  have  as  good  a  chance  as 
another,  so  that  Bill  Sykes,  if  at  the  end 
he  has  still  been  unable  to  make  a  decent 
job  of  his  life,  shall  not  be  able  to  tell 
society  that  he  failed  because  he  was  de 
prived  of  his  natural  rights  as  an  individ 
ual.  It  is  by  the  way  to  say  that  given 
his  natural  rights  Bill  Sykes  is  pretty  sure 
to  make  a  far  better  job  of  his  life  than 
he  ever  does  without  them.  And  the 
sanctity  of  natural  rights  is  not  finally 
satisfied  by  universal  education  and  uni 
versal  franchise. 

These  things  properly  understood  and 
exercised  are  well  enough,  but  both  these 
and  other  presumably  liberal  institutions 
may  sometimes  have  the  effect  of  betray 
ing  that  very  freedom  of  the  individual 
that  it  is  their  right  function  to  foster. 
When  an  educational  system  engages  it 
self,  as  it  too  often  does,  in  training  a 
child  to  a  preconceived  end  instead  of 


io      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

fitting  him  to  frame  a  purpose  of  his 
own,  or  when  a  universal  and  equal  fran 
chise  is  used  by  a  majority  to  deprive  a 
minority  of  self-determination  in  some 
purely  personal  affair,  you  have  the  seeds 
of  tyranny  bearing  their  rank  fruit  in 
systems  established  in  the  name  of  lib 
erty.  The  only  natural  right  of  the  indi 
vidual  worth  bothering  about  is  his  right 
freely  and  completely  to  realize  himself. 
The  only  real  progress  in  the  world  comes 
when  a  man,  for  good  or  ill,  is  allowed 
wholly  to  be  himself.  You  cannot  make 
him  really  better  than  he  is  by  legisla 
tion;  all  you  can  do  by  legislation  is, 
when  he  has  been  sttmted  in  his  growth 
and  not  allowed  to  become  himself  fully, 
to  prevent  the  truncated  version  of  him 
self  from  being  a  nuisance  to  his  fellows. 
This  doctrine  does  not  imply  a  license 
for  every  man  to  run  amuck  and  intimi 
date  society.  For  the  splendid  and  eter 
nally  hopeful  thing  about  human  nature 


LIBERTY  1 1 


is  that  whenever  it  is  allowed  full  rational 
development  it  hardly  ever  wants  to  run 
amuck  or  to  intimidate  any  one.  In  so 
far  as  it  does  want  to  do  this,  it  has  to  be 
restrained,  by  force  if  necessary,  but  it  is 
the  worst  casuistry  of  interested  author 
ity  that  pretends  that  most  men  are  by 
instinct  blackguards,  and  that  only  by 
dragooning  can  their  blackguardism  be 
kept  under  control.  When  a  man  behaves 
like  a  blackguard,  it  is  in  nearly  every 
case  because,  through  some  incomplete 
opportunity  of  self-realization,  he  is  not 
behaving  like  himself. 

That,  then,  is  what  individual  freedom 
means  to  the  honest  democrat.  (I  use  the 
word  'democrat*  always  in  its  general 
sense,  not  in  its  particular  American 
party-political  sense.)  And  in  claiming  for 
every  man  the  right  to  perfect  his  own  na 
ture,  whatever  the  quality  of  that  nature 
may  be,  we  may  reassure  ourselves  that 
with  that  perfection  almost  invariably  goes 


12      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

a  responsible  sense  of  decent  behaviour 
in  every  man  towards  his  fellows.  When 
a  man  is  frightened,  when  his  being  is 
repressed  and  his  will  twisted  by  the  ca 
price  of  the  will  of  others,  he  becomes  a 
menace  to  society  as  surely  as  a  sick  body 
is  a  menace  to  society.  But  a  free  man  is 
a  menace  to  nobody ;  for  in  his  heart  is 
the  wisdom  that  knows  that  no  man 
is  free  who  does  not  recognize  the  free 
dom  of  every  other  man  on  earth. 

This  was  the  first  article  of  Lincoln's 
creed.  It  was  the  faith,  held  with  pas 
sionate  conviction,  that  bade  the  new 
American  Republic  take  <  Liberty '  for 
one  panel  of  its  watchword.  It  is  the  idea 
that  has  persisted  through  nearly  five 
centuries  of  our  English  life,  making  our 
national  unity  still  a  thing  for  which 
more  than  a  million  men  gave  their  lives. 
What  that  national  unity  means,  what 
is  the  true  significance  of  '  E  Pluribus 
Unum,'  shall  be  our  next  consideration. 


II 

<E  PLURIBUS  UNUM* 


II 

<  E  PLURIBUS  UNUM ' 
BEHIND  all  truly  great  and  profound 
workings  of  the  human  spirit  is  a  mysti 
cal  element.  Just  as  growth  in  nature  is 
surrounded  by  the  mystical  processes  of 
fertilization  and  birth,  of  unions  of  two 
forces  to  produce  a  third,  of  such  strange 
ordinations  as  the  rigours  of  winter  pre 
paring  the  harvests  of  the  fall,  so  in  the 
corporate  energies  of  mankind  building 
up  communities  and  nations  we  are  aware 
of  primal  impulses  that  are  at  a  glance 
irreconcilable,  and  yet  on  reflection  are 
seen  to  be  complementary  to  each  other. 
No  more  striking  instance  of  this  is  to 
be  found  in  history  than  in  the  problem 
that  faced  Lincoln  when  he  became  Pres 
ident  of  the  United  States. 

Setting  aside  for  the  moment  his  con 
stitutional   responsibilities,  which    made 


1 6      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

him  recognize  the  practice  of  slavery 
under  certain  conditions,  here  was  a  man 
whose  every  instinct  was  for  freeing  a 
subject  race  in  the  name  of  that  individ 
ual  liberty  of  which  we  have  spoken. (in 
clear  enough  terms  he  proclaimed  that 
it  was  no  question  as  to  the  relative  supe 
riority  of  one  race  or  another,  or,  in  words 
that  I  have  already  used,  as  to  whether 
one  man  was  as  good  as  another.  It  was 
merely  a  question,  he  insisted,  of  every 
man,  irrespective  of  race  or  natural  en 
dowment,  fulfilling  himself  unbeset  by 
the  tyranny  of  others,  even  though  that 
tyranny  should  sometimes  be  beneficent 
in  intention.  And  at  the  very  moment 
when  he  had  this  question  to  settle,  he 
was  called  upon  to  answer  the  claim  of 
a  vast  number  of  people,  speaking  with 
impressive  unanimity,  to  self-government 
and  the  right  to  repudiate  national  unity. 
In  the  same  breath  that  he  announced 
the  freedom  of  the  individual  to  be  a 


E  PLURIBUS  UNUM          17 

sacred  cause  in  which  no  sacrifice  could 
be  too  great,  he  declared  resistance  against 
this  other  claim  to  be  a  cause  equally 
sacred,  one  for  which  he  would  and  did 
commit  his  country  to  furious  agony  .\ 

There  lies  the  argument  of  as  pro 
foundly  moving  a  drama  as  has  ever  beaten 
through  the  heart  of  a  man  and  a  nation. 
At  first  it  would  seem  that  in  its  two  de 
cisions  Lincoln's  mind  was  contradicting 
itself,  that  his  refusal  to  the  South  was  a 
negation  of  his  stand  for  the  negroes. 
Here,  it  might  be  said  by  sincere  but  su 
perficial  thought,  was  a  plea  at  once  for 
personal  independence  and  public  sub 
jection.  But  this  was  not  the  truth  of 
Lincoln's  position.  Had  there  been  no 
slave  issue,  the  South  would  have  made 
no  claim  to  the  right  of  secession,  and 
while  it  is  important  to  remember  that 
it  was  against  this  claim  that  Lincoln 
fought  -and  not  against  the  slave  founda 
tion  so  long  as  it  was  confined  within 


1 8      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

t  existing  limitations,  it  is  equally  impor 
tant  to  remember  that  at  bottom  what 
led  the  South  to  revolt  was  not  some  ideal 
wish  for  a  separate  national  being,  but 
the  ambition  to  extend  slave-rights  which 
as  they  then  stood  were  not  in  immediate 
dispute.  While  this  reflection  throws  a 
very  significant  sidelight  upon  the  par 
ticular  case  in  dispute  and  Lincoln's  atti 
tude  towards  it,  the  fact  remains  that  it 
was  definitely  the  claim  to  right  of  seces 
sion  that  Lincoln  resisted  by  force,  irre 
spective  altogether  of  the  purpose  behind 
the  claim.  What,  then,  is  this  principle 
of  national  unity  that  he,  with  all  his 
passion  for  liberty,  thought  it  right  to 
preserve  at  so  heavy  a  cost  ? 

In  the  first  place  let  us  dismiss  the  idea 
that  national  unity  is  desirable  merely 
because  of  numerical  force,  as  though  the 
people  who  could  put  the  largest  army 
into  the  fields  of  war  or  commerce  were 
necessarily  the  people  to  whom  national 


E  PLURIBUS  UNUM  19 

unity  meant  most.  This  is  the  view  of  the 
stupidest  kind  of  materialism,  and  should 
concern  us  as  little  as  it  did  Lincoln.  Na 
tional  unity  is  as  important  a  thing  to  a 
Dane  as  it  is  to  a  Chinaman.  The  con 
certed  voice  of  a  nation  of  four  hundred 
million  people  is  not  more  impressive  than 
that  of  one  of  five  million,  otherwise 
Belgium  must  docilely  have  done  as  Ger 
many  bade  her  in  1914. 

It  was  not  on  such  considerations  as 
these  that  Lincoln  opposed  the  division 
of  the  United  States  into  two  nations  of 
North  and  South.  He  opposed  it  because 
he  perceived  that  if  once  an  internal  dis 
integration  of  that  kind  were  allowed  to 
begin,  the  abstract  principle  of  nationality 
would  be  threatened  in  his  country,  and 
quite  possibly  destroyed,  and  it  was  this 
abstract  principle  that  he  was  defending 
because  he  was  inflexibly  convinced  of  its 
mystical  purport  in  the  lives  of  men  and 
of  the  direct  value  it  bore  to  individual 


2o      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

liberty.  What  the  precise  mystical  mean 
ing  of  this  sense  of  nationality  is  was  never 
more  apparent  than  it  is  in  the  life  of 
the  world  to-day.  It  was  not  the  least  of 
Lincoln's  triumphs  that  he  perceived  this 
significance  in  the  abstract  at  a  time  when 
its  operation  in  daily  affairs  was  far  from 
being  as  obvious  as  it  was  to  become  a 
couple  of  generations  thence. 

In  this  matter  he  was  largely  the  prac 
tical  statesman  working  to  a  prophetic 
end,  guided  by  spiritual  instinct  rather 
than  by  immediate  necessities.  The  fact 
that  needed  the  vision  of  the  seer  for  Lin 
coln  to  apprehend  is  plain  for  all  of  us 
but  the  wantonly  blind  or  imbecile  to 
day.  The  problem  that  is  distracting  every 
country  alike  in  our  western  civilization 
to-day  is  the  conflict  between  capital 
and  labour.  It  is  a  conflict  that  has  been 
brewing  through  thirty  years  of  indus 
trial  development  and  one  that  was  bound 
sooner  or  later  to  come  to  a  crisis  in  the 


E  PLURIBUS  UNUM  21 

open.  But  in  every  country,  in  so  far  as 
it  is  purely  a  conflict  between  two  forces 
in  society  that  have  forgotten  in  a  wild 
competitive  turmoil  that  their  interests 
are  indisputably  the  same,  the  collision 
is  not  a  very  alarming  one,  nor  is  it  by 
any  means  beyond  hope  of  rational  and 
permanent  settlement.  In  England,  for 
example,  the  working-man  has  for  a  gen 
eration  been  underpaid  and  overworked. 
This  has  been  less  due  to  the  deliberate 
villainy  of  employers  than  might  often 
be  supposed  from  the  denunciations  of 
public  agitators.  The  evil  condition  has 
been  of  slowly  insidious  and  almost  un 
seen  growth,  and  capital  often  enough  has 
been  unconscious  of  its  injustices.  But 
while  we  may  decline  to  indulge  too 
freely  in  imprecations,  the  injustice  has 
been  there,  and  cruel  in  its  working. 
Labour  has  very  rightly  revolted  against 
it,  and  with  the  revolt  has  come,  as  may 
be  seen  by  unmistakable  evidence  on  every 


22      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

hand,  a  quickening  on  the  part  of  capital 
to  its  responsibilities  and  a  real  desire  in 
employers,  especially  the  younger  ones, 
to  meet  every  rational  demand  of  labour, 
and  a  new  understanding  of  common  in 
terests.  On  this  aspect  of  the  question  I 
can  imagine  no  clearer  or  more  convinc 
ing  statement  than  is  to  be  found  in  cer 
tain  chapters  of  Mr.  Frank  Vanderlip's 
remarkable  book,  'What  Happened  to 
Europe/  And  in  so  far  as  this  problem 
with  us  is  a  case  of  one  body  of  English 
men  disputing  as  to  certain  personal  rights 
with  another  body  of  Englishmen,  there 
is  no  great  difficulty  in  the  way  of  settle 
ment,  nor  have  I  any  fear  that  such  set 
tlement  will  now  be  long  delayed.  The 
admirable  temper  with  which  our  railway 
strike  of  1 9 1 9  was  conducted  is  of  the  best 
omen,  and  I  know  from  personal  contact 
the  extreme  anxiety  of  the  best  of  our 
labour  leaders  to  reach  a  durable  under 
standing  without  bitterness;  and  the  ex- 


E  PLURIBUS  UNUM  23 

perience  of  every  country  must,  I  am  sure, 
be  the  same  as  ours.  In  so  far  as  the  labour 
problem  in  America  consists  of  a  readjust 
ment  of  privileges  between  two  bodies  of 
Americans,  it  should  be  certain  of  quick 
and  complete  solution. 

There  is,  however,  another  aspect  of 
the  labour  question,  which  very  mate 
rially  bears  upon  the  value  of  national 
unity  of  which  we  are  speaking.  By  the 
accidents  of  migration  it  affects  some 
countries  more  closely  than  others,  but 
it  is  more  or  less  present  throughout  the 
western  world.  There  are  floating  about 
the  earth  a  vast  number  of  isolated  hu 
man  beings  who  have,  in  any  strict  sense, 
no  nationality  at  all.  It  is  perhaps  when 
you  leave  your  own  country  for  a  time 
that  you  most  become  aware  of  what 
nationality  means  to  you ;  but,  however 
that  may  be,  in  the  normal  course  of  his 
life  a  man  is  no  more  conscious  on  the 
surface  of  having  a  nationality  than  he 


24      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

is  of  having  a  pair  of  boots  when  he  goes 
out  in  the  wet.  If  he  suddenly  found 
himself  in  the  wet  without  boots  he 
would  be  very  acutely  conscious  that 
boots  meant  something.  It  is  not  a  case 
of  one  nationality  being  better  than  an 
other,  just  as  we  saw  that  it  was  not  a 
case  of  one  man  being  better  than  an 
other  in  the  matter  of  individual  liberty. 
None  but  a  tomfool  Englishman  thinks 
that  the  English  are  better  than  Amer 
icans,  and  none  but  a  tomfool  American 
thinks  that  Americans  are  better  than 
the  English.  Each  of  them,  when  he 
really  gets  his  mind  down  to  it,  knows, 
however  critical  he  may  be  of  his  gov 
ernment  and  fellow-countrymen,  that  the 
very  possession  of  an  explicit  nationality 
gives  spiritual  moorings  and  an  established 
background  to  his  whole  life.  Without 
this  he  remains  always,  and  necessarily 
so,  preoccupied  with  his  personal  inter 
est,  and  becomes  a  disturbing  influence 
wherever  he  may  move. 


E  PLURIBUS  UNUM  25 

Again,  it  is  futile  to  blame  him,  but 
it  is  futile,  too,  to  ignore  the  fact.  He 
has  nothing  of  the  mystical  sense  of 
belonging  to  a  whole  that  is  greater 
than  himself — that  is,  indeed,  the  great 
est  expression  of  himself;  he  has  no 
symbol  to  speak  to  him  of  the  secur 
ity  and  splendour  of  a  commonweal.  We 
who  have  this  often  enough  disregard 
it,  but  without  it  we  should  forlornly 
realize  what  it  is  to  be  outcast,  and  it 
is  a  realization  that  sears  the  spirit  of 
man  and  makes  him  an  unhappy  irri 
tant  in  the  world.  It  adds  to  our  power 
of  individual  liberty,  it  does  not  take 
away  from  it.  With  majestic  vision  Lin 
coln  knew  this,  and  it  was  the  same  deep 
understanding  that  led  America  to  add 
to  the  inscription  *  Liberty '  that  other 
one,  '  E  Pluribus  Unum.'  We  may  now 
see  how  America  and  England  stand  to 
gether  in  the  world  for  this  mystic  union 
of  the  two  things. 


Ill 

ANGLO-AMERICAN  UNION 


Ill 

ANGLO-AMERICAN  UNION 
WHATEVER  abuse  honest  dealing  may 
seem  to  come  to  in  the  daily  pressure  of 
life,  the  history  of  social  evolution  teaches 
us  that  in  the  long  run,  the  moral  idea 
always  triumphs  over  a  false  immediate 
expediency.  Such  expediency  to-day  is 
crying  shrilly  throughout  the  world,  as 
though  the  bitterness  of  the  past  five 
years  had  gone  for  nothing.  We  must 
face  clearly  a  very  simple  but  pregnant 
fact :  either  the  Great  War  was  fought 
for  freedom,  or  it  was  a  base  war. 

In  every  country  there  are  many  peo 
ple  who  advocate  a  disgusting  scramble 
for  some  kind  of  spoils  or  another,  peo 
ple  often  with  great  influence  and  power 
ful  interests,  and  unless  this  insensate 
gospel  is  steadily  opposed  by  the  rest  of 
us  with  a  clear  moral  idea,  the  faith  in 


30      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

which  our  friends —  millions  of  them — 
died  will  be  shamefully  betrayed,  and  the 
blame  will  be  as  heavily  upon  us  as  upon 
the  reactionaries  whose  little  vision  we 
failed  to  enlarge.  But  the  great  idea  will 
surely  assert  itself,  and  doing  so  its  domi 
nation  is  certain. 

If  there  is  one  force  above  all  others 
that  can  foster  the  future  political  and 
social  well-being  of  the  world,  I  have  no 
hesitation  in  saying  that  it  is  a  right 
understanding  and  cooperation  between 
the  American  and  English  peoples.  To 
consider  first  the  actual  magnitude  of 
such  a  force.  The  two  races  together 
make  up  an  agency  that  is  in  the  fore 
front  of  the  world  in  physical  vigour,  in 
commercial  enterprise  and  experience,  in 
public  spirit,  in  artistic  vitality,  and  in  a 
reputation  for  personal  integrity.  There 
is  no  measuring  the  authority  that  would 
attach  to  any  clearly  defined  ideal  that 
might  be  expressed  by  the  united  voices 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  UNION      3  i 

of  the  two  countries;  it  would  have  a 
weight  in  the  consciousness  of  the  world 
that  could  not  fail  to  impress  itself  in 
delibly. 

(  The  two  races  are  peculiarly  fitted  for 
such  unity  of  doctrine,  by  tradition  and 
ancestry,  by  their  literature,  by  their 
speech  and  the  habit  of  their  lives,  and 
by  their  natural  instincts.  And  if  they 
should  at  this  time  speak  together  for 
an  ideal  that  should  hold  the  coming 
days  against  the  forces  of  reaction,  it  is 
clear  that  their  instincts  would  work  as 
one  in  deciding  what  that  ideal  should 
be.  We  both  boast  of  being  free  people, 
and  the  boast  happily  is  not  without 
reason.  But  our  freedom  is  being  se 
verely  tested,  and  it  is  for  us  to  show 
that  it  can  stand  whatever  strain  may  be 
imposed  upon  it  by  greedy  or  revengeful 
plutocrats  and  Prussianized  militarists  on 
the  one  hand  and  the  mere  delirium  of 
anarchy  on  the  other.  Both  countries 


32      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

have  the  proud  heritage  of  individual 
liberty,  recorded  for  them  at  Washington 
and  at  Runnymede.  To  show  ourselves 
worthy  of  the  right,  we  will  guard  it 
against  the  inroads  of  the  jack-in-office 
and  the  drill-sergeant.  Both  countries 
have  the  principle  of  national  unity  in 
grained  in  their  constitutional  codes,  and 
it  is  far  too  precious  a  thing  to  surrender 
to  disaffected  visionaries  who  have  lost 
their  hold  on  facts  and  who  forget  that 
liberty  without  law  is  as  surely  chaos  in 
the  spiritual  world  as  it  is  in  the  mate 
rial. 

The  assertion  of  these  two  ideas  in 
perfect  fusion  —  '  Liberty '  and  '  E  Plu- 
ribus  Unum'  —  is  the  moral  purpose  for 
which  America  and  England  may  stand 
together  to-day  with  overwhelming  au 
thority  against  every  negation.  And  never 
have  two  races  been  more  fit  in  natural 
equipment  for  alliance  in  so  good  a  cause. 
In  every  considerable  respect  the  way  for 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  UNION      33 

such  a  union  of  purpose  is  free  of  obsta 
cles.  But  it  is  greatly  to  be  desired  that 
the  people  in  the  two  countries  who 
have  anything  to  do  with  the  leadership 
of  thought  should  have  every  opportunity 
for  personal  acquaintance.  It  has  been 
said  that  good-will  between  two  nations 
depends  more  upon  personal  friendship 
than  upon  common  interests.  This  may 
conceivably  be  a  debatable  proposition 
politically,  but  there  is  fortunately  no 
question  of  choice.  If  we  have  not 
learned  from  the  war  that  the  common 
interest  is  an  established  fact,  we  have 
learned  nothing  —  a  common  interest  far 
profounder  than  a  purely  military  one. 
In  this  matter  it  grows  daily  more  cer 
tain  that  to  any  long-sighted  view  the 
interest  of  every  people  in  the  world  is 
the  common  interest,  and  it  is  no  longer 
doubtful  that  distemper  in  any  spot  of 
the  globe  reacts  in  every  part  of  it  as 
surely  as  it  does  in  a  man's  body.  But 


34      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

while  the  common  interest  of  the  world 
is  established  as  a  matter  of  plain  sense, 
and  its  binding  power  assured  unless  the 
world  has  turned  bedlam  —  the  apparent 
evidence  of  which  we  may  fortunately 
mistrust  —  the  value  of  personal  friend 
ship  between  peoples  can  hardly  be  over 
rated,  and  those  of  us  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic  who  desire  the  alliance  of 
which  I  have  been  speaking  see  a  pecu 
liar  and  subtle  necessity  for  this  intimacy 
between  Americans  and  the  English. 

If  you  from  America  or  I  from  Eng 
land  make  a  trip  to  China  or  Lapland 
we  go  prepared  for  a  life  that  in  its  ex 
ternal  habit  is  wholly  unlike  our  own. 
Language,  clothes,  manners,  personal  en 
vironment,  business  and  domestic  meth 
ods,  are  all  so  foreign  to  us  that  we 
accept  the  difference  as  x  thing  for  inter 
ested  observation,  and  because  of  its  very 
strangeness  we  think  no  more  about  it. 
But  when  two  people  have  in  all  essen- 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  UNION      35 

tial  respects  the  same  speech  and  customs 
and  appearance,  there  is  always  the  like 
lihood  of  a  superficial  acquaintance  or 
acquaintance  at  a  distance  emphasizing 
the  slight  differences.  On  each  side,  at 
first,  there  is  a  momentary  tendency  to 
suppose  that  the  other  man  is  working 
precisely  to  your  own  standard  and  not 
quite  bringing  it  off  ("putting  it  over,"' 
since  I  am  in  New  York  and  not  in 
London!),  and  we  are  aware  of  what  seem 
to  be  little  peculiarities  in  idiom  and  the 
cut  of  a  coat  and  of  table  ceremony  and 
the  like,  and  then  we  are  always  a  little 
apt  thoughtlessly  to  laugh  at  the  other 
fellow.  We  all  know  the  capital  that  the 
cartoonists  and  witty  paragraphists  on 
either  side  make  of  this  kind  of  thing. 
And  while  we  all  very  much  like  to  be 
laughed  at  when  we  are  trying  to  be 
funny,  we  rightly  enough  don't  so  much 
like  to  be  laughed  at  when  we  are  trying 
to  be  natural,  and  so  there_  comes  from 


36      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

an  entirely  trivial  source  a  certain  danger 
of  friction  of  which  we  may  be  hardly 
conscious,  but  which  none  the  less  does 
its  work.  And  one  of  the  virtues  of  two 
days'  personal  intimacy  is  that  these 
things  are  entirely  forgotten.  I  need  not 
say  that  I  do  not  suggest  that  this  is  its 
chief  virtue;  it  is  a  small  one,  but  one 
of  peculiar  consequence. 

Here,  then,  is  epitomized  a  large 
movement  of  the  public  mind  between 
two  races  such  as  perhaps  more  than  any 
other  at  this  stage  of  history  might  help 
in  clearing  up  the  woeful  untidiness  into 
which  civilization  has  fallen.  When  the 
communal  mind  of  a  society  or  societies 
addresses  itself  to  any  great  abstract  idea, 
such  as  is  here  proposed,  nothing  is  more 
helpful  to  the  process  than  the  discovery 
of  some  concrete  symbol  round  which 
abstract  aspirations  can  take  shape.  Never 
was  this  necessity  more  completely  served 
than  it  is  in  our  present  case  by  the  fig- 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  UNION      37 

ure  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  I  should  like 
to  think  that  the  people  which  produced 
him  would  take  this  inevitable  choice  as 
the  best  tribute  that  an  Englishman  could 
pay  to  the  character  of  their  race,  for  no 
man  is  greater  than  the  composite  qual 
ity  of  the  race  from  which  he  springs. 
The  English  feeling  that  this  choice  is 
the  inevitable  one  is  not  so  new  a  thing 
as  it  might  seem.  It  is  true  that  in  the 
years  1860-65  there  was  a  large  body 
of  opinion  in  England  antagonistic,  and 
very  stupidly  so,  to  Lincoln  and  his  cause, 
and  that  body  included  a  majority  in 
governmental  authority.  But  it  is  equally 
true  that  a  large  and  very  populous  part 
of  England  supported  the  Union  with 
heroic  self-sacrifice ;  there  are  still  living 
men  who  remember  the  almost  starving 
crowds  of  cotton  operatives  kneeling 
down  in  the  great  town-square  at  Man 
chester  when  the  first  cotton  bale  was 
brought  in  after  the  war.  And  it  was  an 


38      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

act,  not  merely  of  thanksgiving  for  re 
turning  livelihood,  but  of  grave  assurance 
that  the  right,  for  which  they  had  suf 
fered  three  thousand  miles  away,  had 
won.  No  cause  in  those  years  in  Eng 
land  that  had  behind  it  the  prestige  of 
Bright  and  Cobden  was  without  a  solid 
following  of  the  best  and  most  weighty 
thought  in  the  country.  We  in  England 
to-day  who  look  to  Lincoln  as  the  ex 
emplar  of  a  crusade  in  which  we  so  pro 
foundly  believe,  are  not  without  an  an 
cestry  who  would  bless  our  judgment. 
It  is  now  the  time  to  examine  more 
closely  the  precise  way  in  which  Lincoln 
is  fitted  for  this  election 


IV 

LINCOLN  AS  SYMBOL 


IV 

LINCOLN  AS  SYMBOL 
THE  life-story  of  Lincoln  in  its  recorded 
detail  is  too  well  known  to  be  retold, 
least  of  all  by  an  Englishman  in  Amer 
ica.  Yet  there  are  some  aspects  of  it  that 
have  to  be  considered  anew  for  our  pur 
pose.  It  has  been  my  privilege  recently 
to  spend  several  days  in  the  Middle- 
West  country,  surrounded  by  the  Lin 
coln  tradition.  There  more  than  any 
where  else,  I  suppose,  is  emphatic  wit 
ness  of  what  Lincoln  is  in  the  American 
mind  to-day.  Often  you  will  meet  men 
who  remember  him  in  his  lawyer  days, 
and  almost  everybody  has  at  one  genera 
tion's  remove  personal  recollections  of 
his  daily  life  and  a  store  of  characteristic 
stories  to  tell  about  him.  The  figure  of 
'Old  Abe'  looms  largely,  and  quite  nat 
urally,  in  the  mind  of  a  generation  that 


42      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

has  hardly  forgotten  him  as  a  neighbour, 
and  perhaps  a  little  to  the  exclusion  of 
that  other  figure  that  is  not  of  local,  or 
even  national,  but  universal  significance. 
It  would  be  odd,  indeed,  if  the  man, 
whose  homely  habit  and  racy  humour 
typify  so  exactly  those  strains  in  Amer 
ican  character,  were  not  especially  dear 
in  the  hearts  of  his  countrymen  for  that 
side  of  his  personality.  But  while  a  stran 
ger  listens  enchanted  and  with  entire  sym 
pathy  to  these  illuminations,  be  they 
gospel  or  apochryphal,  he  knows  that  in 
a  hundred  pilgrimages  on  earth  he  may 
be  delighted  by  such  sagas  in  little  of  the 
presiding  genius.  And  should  you  or  I 
ever  become  figures  of  even  national  im 
portance,  qualities  would  be  discovered 
in  us  to  lend  colour  to  the  same  charm 
ing  kind  of  celebration. 

But  when  the  evening  closes  and  the 
pleasant  gossip  is  over,  the  stranger  goes 
up  alone  and  remains  with  another  Lin- 


LINCOLN  AS  SYMBOL          43 

coin,  of  whom  these  good  yarns  were  but 
the  trappings  and  the  suits.  He  remem 
bers  the  long  determination  of  days  in 
the  wild  places  of  Kentucky  and  Indiana, 
the  slow  preparation  of  a  great  executive 
genius  on  the  slow  and  rambling  Illinois 
circuit,  the  humble  tenderness  among  his 
fellows  of  a  man  whose  vision  lay  far 
beyond  theirs,  the  awakening  conscious 
ness  of  a  destiny  to  leadership,  and  the 
simple  assumption  of  authority  at  a  mo 
ment  when  the  difficulties  of  authority 
were  without  parallel  in  the  nation's  his 
tory,  when  divine  fitness  alone  could  have 
called  this  man  from  relative  obscurity 
above  the  claims  of  a  dozen  others  famous 
in  the  public  mind.  And,  remembering 
these  things,  the  stranger,  if  he  be  an 
Englishman,  proudly  remembers,  too, 
that  the  founders  of  a  race  great  enough 
to  produce  this  man,  in  whom  practical 
ability  and  spiritual  majesty  were  so 
strangely  blended,  were  a  little  group  of 


44      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

voyagers  from  his  own  country,  setting 
out  to  build  a  new  world  after  their  own 
gallant  hearts.  He  responds,  as  likely 
enough  he  has  never  done  before,  to  the 
commonplace  phrase,  'our  American 
cousins/  He  tells  himself  that  he  has 
blood  in  his  veins  drawn  not  very  far 
back  in  history  from  the  stock  that  bore 
this  hero  of  life,  and  he  feels  splendidly 
the  kinship  moving  down  from  the  Iron 
sides  of  England  to  Abraham  Lincoln  of 
America,  and  back  again,  as  it  were,  to  the 
fearless  yeoman-merchant  stock  among 
whom  he  still  moves  in  his  own  country 
and  of  whom  he  got  all  that  he  most 
cares  to  think  of  in  his  own  character. 
And  the  stranger  goes  the  more  gladly 
among  his  American  friends  for  his 
thought.  He  knows  that  in  this  man, 
the  fine  flower  of  the  native  chivalry  of 
their  race,  there  is  one  in  whom  all  his 
own  best  aspirations  are  consummated 
and  given  human  form.  He  feels  through 


LINCOLN  AS  SYMBOL          45 

this  manifestation  that  the  deepest  desires 
of  his  own  people  and  theirs  are  the  same 
in  the  texture  of  their  being. 

If  we  set  aside  for  the  moment  what  we 
call  the  local  idiom  of  character,  there 
is  but  one  country  in  the  world  outside 
America  that  could  by  any  chance  have 
produced  a  man  of  the  exact  intellectual 
.  cast  and  moral  significance  of  Lincoln, 
and  it  is  England.  Nor  would  an  Eng 
lishman  wish  to  think  that  in  any  other 
race  than  the  American  could  be  produced 
a  man  corresponding  to  an  ideal  of  his 
own.  This  is  not  said  in  any  narrowly 
parochial  sense,  as  implying  that  the 
apotheosis  of  the  American  or  the  Eng 
lish  race  is  a  finer  thing  than  that  of  others. 
No  intelligent  American  or  Englishman 
would  speak  without  understanding  rev 
erence  of  Cayour  and  Garibaldi,  of  Wil 
liam  the  Silent,  of  Joan  of  Arc,  or  of 
the  Athenian  princes.  But  these  are  the 
achievement  of  a  genius  in  every  case  other 


46      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

than  our  own,  and,  save  in  an  entirely 
general  way,  we  admire  in  no  spirit  of 
emulation.  The  virtues  that  were  so  ad 
mirable  there  may,  it  is  true,  be  ours  too, 
but  we  recognize  no  constitutional  affinity. 
The  human  spirit  there  expressed  itself 
to  the  same  noble  ends  toward  which  we 
may  reach,  but  their  manner  was  not  our 
manner,  and  they  remain  an  inspiration 
without  informing  us  in  the  realization 
of  ourselves  through  the  processes  of  our 
racial  characteristics.  It  is  the  men  who 
come  to  these  same  great  issues  and  at  the 
same  time  are  of  our  own  blood  who  must 
necessarily  remain  our  best  instructors. 
And  in  salient  qualities  an  Englishman 
finds  his  own  best  potentiality  expressed 
as  surely  and  fully  in  Lincoln  as  though 
this  man  had  spent  his  life  in  an  English 
environment.  So  that  if  an  Anglo-Ameri 
can  alliance  of  the  kind  we  discussed  can 
be  achieved  for  the  good  of  the  world, 
there  even  is  no  figure  so  well  fitted  as  he 


LINCOLN  AS  SYMBOL          47 

around  whom  may  crystallize  the  govern 
ing  idea  of  such  a  union.  Through  a  com 
mon  homage  we  shall  point  our  imagi 
nations  to  a  common  aim,  and  we  in 
England  may  well  look  to  America  with 
gratitude  for  a  light  so  clear,  and  with 
our  gratitude  will  be  mingled  the  pride 
of  kinship. 

There  is  no  contradiction  in  saying  that  IX 
Lincoln  is  becoming  a  universal  figure 
and  at  the  same  time  that  he  stands  in 
sharp  definition  as  a  distinctive  ideal  of 
the  English-speaking  race.  Itis  very  much 
like  the  question  of  language  itself.  The 
English  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton  and 
Emerson  is  far  from  being  without  its 
meaning  for  a  Russian  or  a  Dane,  nor 
are  we  insensible  to  the  Spanish  of  Cer 
vantes  or  the  German  of  Goethe.  But  to 
the  average  perceptive  mind  among  us 
'Macbeth'  and  'Samson  Agonistes '  and 
the  '  Over-Soul '  must  remain  more  sig 
nificant  utterances  than  'Don  Quixote' 


48      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

or  *  Faust/  Or,  again,  a  man  may  travel 
the  world  with  eyes  eager  for  the  beauty 
ot  every  landscape  and  go  back  to  his 
home  with  a  durable  treasure  of  recollec 
tion;  but  his  own  familiar  countryside 
will  to  the  end  have  a  meaning  for  him 
that  none  other  can  displace  or  equal. 
The  best  thought  in  every  land  is  becom 
ing  more  and  more  aware  of  Lincoln's 
greatness,  but  it  is  with  no  jealous  sense 
of  proprietorship  that  we  know  that  the 
last  essence  of  that  greatness  must  remain 
always  in  clearer  revelation  to  us  —  I 
embody  my  hopes  by  speaking  already 
of  America  and  England  as  us  —  than  to 
the  rest  of  the  world. 

In  emphasizing  the~common  charac 
teristics  of  our  two  races,  characteristics 
that  may  work  so  powerfully  for  good, 
I  am  by  no  means  unaware  of  our  dif 
ferences.  They  are  many  and  far  from 
negligible.  It  is  a  notable  thing  that  in 
this  matter,  too,  Lincoln  is  very  directly 


LINCOLN  AS  SYMBOL          49 

to  our  purpose,  and  it  will  be  worth 
while  to  enquire  in  what  they  consist 
and  in  what  way  they  seem  to  be  recon 
ciled  in  Lincoln's  personality.  In  doing 
this  I  know  I  shall  not  be  accused  of 
abusing  the  privilege  of  a  guest.  No 
words  of  mine  can  express  my  sense  of 
the  courtesy  and  friendliness  with-  which 
I  have  been  met  by  Americans  of  every 
interest  and  shade  of  political  opinion 
and  ancestral  tradition.  I  want  to  analyze 
our  differences  merely  in  pursuance  of 
my  general  scheme/For  to  understand  a 
difference  is  to  respect  it. 


V 
ANGLO-AMERICAN  DIFFERENCES  (I) 


V 

ANGLO-AMERICAN  DIFFERENCES  (I) 
IT  is  always  easier  for  a  stranger  to  gen 
eralize,  and  to  generalize  shrewdly,  about 
a  country  than  it  is  for  the  people  native 
to  it.  He  is  necessarily  but  very  slightly 
informed,  by  comparison,  as  to  the  de 
tail  of  organization  and  matters  of  per 
sonal  taste  and  prejudice,  but  he  can, 
nevertheless,  take  a  general  view  that  is 
often  very  little  out  of  focus.  The  very 
fact  of  being  in  new  surroundings  inevi 
tably  sharpens  his  faculty  of  observation. 
And  while  this  enables  him  often  to  see 
things  that  custom  is  apt  to  erase  from 
any  conscious  recognition,  it  also  makes 
him  refer  his  own  deductions  back  to 
the  environment  of  his  own  country, 
which  he  thus  realizes  with  new  clarity, 
and  he  may  thus  sometimes  be  in  a  posi 
tion  to  draw  not  uninforming  contrasts. 


54      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

We  may  begin  by  considering  the 
more  superficial  differences  between 
America  and  England,  many  of  them, 
perhaps,  so  trivial  as  to  be  no  more  than 
insignificant  accidents.  The  first  obvious 
impressions  of  an  Englishman  in  America 
are  of  size  and  noise  and  a  certain  hetero 
geneous  quality  in  the  character  of  the 
community.  The  size  bewilders  him  a 
little,  but  it  affects  no  more  than  the  ar 
rangement  of  the  ordinary  facilities  of 
life.  In  England  if  you  are  to  make  a  six 
hours'  railway  journey,  it  is  an  uncommon 
event  that  involves  a  day  or  two  of  prep 
aration  and  you  travel  from  end  to  end 
of  the  country.  In  America  you  go  for 
a  six  hours'  run  with  as  little  thought  as 
you  would  take  a  car  down  the  street, 
and  the  first  time  the  stranger  stays  in  a 
train  for  twenty-four  hours  and  consults 
his  map  to  find  that  he  has  apparently 
made  but  a  stride  from  the  coast,  he  may 
be  forgiven  a  little  perplexity.  But  here 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  DIFFERENCES  55 

is  a  difference  that  is  plainly  of  no  con 
sequence,  implying  nothing.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  the  noise.  London  seems 
to  be  thunder  until  you  have  been  in 
New  York.  I  amuse  myself  by  trying  to 
explain  this,  but  without  much  success. 
Perhaps  the  height  of  the  buildings  has 
something  to  do  with  it,  perhaps  the 
greater  traffic  speed,  perhaps  an  innate 
sense  in  the  people  that  they  live  in  a 
large  country  and  must  speak  loudly  to 
be  heard.  But  whatever  the  cause,  the 
fact  is  there.  An  Englishman  in  an  as 
sembly  of  Americans  spends  most  of  his 
time  in  wondering  how  any  single  voice 
can  be  distinguished  among  ^so  much 
vigour.  But,  if  he  deals  fairly  with  him 
self,  he  remembers  too  that  he  himself 
often  cannot  be  heard  at  all.  The  rather 
vociferous  headlines  of  the  American 
press  and  the  vast  expanses  of  an  adver 
tisement  seem  to  him  to  be  symptomatic 
of  the  same  necessity,  whatever  it  may 


56      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

be.  But  he  quickly  realizes  from  it  all 
that  there  is  as  little  sense  in  supposing 
that  his  American  friends  are  unduly  ex 
cited  as  there  is  in  supposing  that  his  own 
people  are  asleep.  It  is  a  difference  no 
more  important  than  the  fact  that  here 
the  traffic  keeps  to  the  right  and  not  to 
the  left,  or  that  the  dollar  in  his  pocket 
represents  more  than  the  shilling  at  home 
in  his  bank  account.  He  has  to  keep  his 
wits  about  him,  that  is  all. 

The  heterogeneous  quality  of  which 
I  have  spoken  is  another  matter.  The 
visitor  soon  recognizes  that  running 
through  the  country  is  a  strong  strain  of 
blood  other  than  that  of  the  first  English 
and  Dutch  settlers.  I  do  not  mean  the 
definitely  alien  population,  or  the  indi 
vidual  strays  who  have  lost  all  sense  of 
national  unity.  Of  these  I  have  already 
spoken.  But  in  almost  every  American 
citizen,  to  whom  nationality  is  a  matter 
of  cardinal  importance  equal  with  his 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  DIFFERENCES  57 

sense  of  personal  liberty,  there  is  a  sug 
gestion  of  a  cosmopolitan  instinct  that 
comes  of  a  slow  process  of  assimilation 
of  many  strains  into  one  composite  racial 
effect.  It  has  been  suggested  sometimes 
to  me  by  shrewd  American  friends  that 
the  great  size  of  the  country,  making 
complete  contact  with  the  entire  national 
life  extremely  difficult  for  the  average 
individual,  tends  to  make  provincialism 
more  prevalent  than  it  is  in  England, 
where  it  is  relatively  easy  to  keep  in  touch 
with  the  general  activity  from  John 
O'Groats  to  Land's  End.  But  the  exact 
opposite  seems  to  me  to  be  the  truth. 
Provincialism  has  never  in  my  mind  im 
plied  an  inferior  kind  of  life,  and  in  Eng 
land  the  provinces  have  contributed  a 
good  deal  more  than  their  share  to  the 
country's  stock  of  national  enlighten 
ment.  But  whether  its  prevalence  be 
reckoned  a  virtue  or  otherwise,  I  am  sure 
that  there  is  less  of  it  in  America  than 


5  8      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

in  England.  And  for  the  thing  that  takes 
its  place  we  have  no  precise  parallel.  Pro 
vincialism  implies  being  provincial  to 
something,  and  in  England  the  whole 
country  is  more  or  less  explicitly  provin 
cial  to  London.  This  kind  of  fictitious 
relationship  is,  I  think,  not  at  all  good 
for  London,  and  not  much  good  to  the 
provinces,  but  it  is  a  fact.  But  in  Amer 
ica  the  two  circumstances  of  which  I 
have  spoken,  a  cosmopolitan  —  or  more 
strictly,  perhaps,  one  should  say  metro 
politan —  instinct  of  the  people  and  the 
great  distances  dividing  one  centre  of 
population  from  another  have  resulted  in 
the  creation  of  a  great  many  towns  very 
notably  cosmopolitan — or  metropolitan 
—  in  character.  And  each  of  these  has 
not  only  an  independent  unity,  but  also 
a  remarkable  degree  of  self-contained 
finality.  You  feel  in  them,  far  less  than 
you  do  almost  anywhere  in  England,  that 
they  are,  so  to  speak,  on  the  way  to 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  DIFFERENCES  59 

somewhere  or  the  destination  from  some 
where.  They  are  merely  and  sufficiently 
themselves. 

Two  small  but  significant  indications 
may  be  seen  by  a  comparison  between 
the  hotels  and  roads  of  the  two  coun 
tries.  In  every  town  to-day  much  of  its 
most  important  life  must  necessarily  cen 
tre  in  its  hotels.  In  England  the  hotels 
in  all  but  the  largest  towns,  and  in  most 
of  them,  are  bad.  The  inference  is,  subtly 
but  plainly,  that  you  should  want  to  stay 
there  as  short  a  time  as  you  can,  and  with 
the  least  possible  sense  that  it  is  worth 
while  being  in  the  town  at  all.  The  Eng 
lish  roads,  on  the  other  hand,  are  admir 
able,  as  though  everything  should  be  done 
to  make  travel  between  place  and  place 
convenient.  In  America  we  find  these 
things  pertinently  reversed.  You  go  into 
a  small  town,  such,  shall  we  say,  as 
Springfield,  Illinois,  and  you  find  a  hotel 
perfectly  equipped,  in  close  touch  with 


60      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

the  civic  life,  taking  an  immense  and 
impressive  pride  in  itself,  inviting  you  as 
it  were  to  settle  yourself  down  in  a  place 
that  has  not  dreamt  of  any  sovereignty 
but  its  own.  But  the  roads  are  such  as 
would  raise  a  scream  of  protest  in  Eng 
land,  as  though  America  had  had  neither 
time  nor  inclination  to  tidy  up  the  high 
way  between  this  town  and  that.  There 
is  a  straight  and  businesslike  railway  track 
if  you  really  must  move  on  to  another 
place,  but  the  one  you  happen  to  be  in 
ought  to  seem  good  enough  anyway. 
Commerce  implies  some  sort  of  means 
of  transit,  but  not  such  as  is  to  be  made 
a  luxurious  symbol  of  the  virtue  of  mov 
ing  on. 

This  homely  and  perhaps  not  alto 
gether  unfanciful  contrast  is  symptomatic, 
it  seems  to  me,  of  a  striking  difference 
in  the  governing  machines  in  the  two 
countries.  The  theory  of  government  in 
England,  a  small  country  with  continual 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  DIFFERENCES  61 

action  and  reaction  from  point  to  point, 
is  one  of  direct  contact  between  parlia 
ment  and  the  people,  and  a  daily  responsi 
bility  of  the  man  in  office  to  the  elector 
ate.  Although  it  may  not  always  operate 
fully  in  practice,  that  is  the  theory,  and 
a  government  is  liable  to  defeat  and  dis 
solution  at  a  moment's  notice  if  it  comes 
into  open  conflict  with  the  will  of  the 
people.  In  America,  on  the  other  hand, 
where  every  State,  and,  one  might  almost 
say,  every  town  within  the  State,  is  an 
autonomous  constitution,  this  public  idea 
carries  through  to  the  form  of  Federal 
Government  itself,  and  you  have  there  a 
body  that  is,  relatively  speaking,  remote 
and  isolated  in  its  authority.  Again,  in 
practice  public  opinion  must  have  an 
influence  upon  the  Government  greater 
than  is  apparent  in  the  nature  of  the  in 
strument,  but  the  theory  is  one  of  less 
immediate  responsibility  to  the  people 
than  is  the  case  in  England, 


62      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

Both  systems  have  their  virtues  and 
defects.  In  America  you  get  in  the  Gov 
ernment  an  increased  sense  of  stability, 
which  is  wholesome,  and  an  increased 
sense  of  impunity,  which  is  dangerous.  In 
England  you  get  a  more  or  less  direct 
power  of  popular  veto,  which  is  altogether 
bracing  for  the  Government,  but  at  the 
same  time  you  add  enormously  to  the  evils 
of  misguided  popular  clamour.  There  are 
further  aspects  of  this  distinction  between 
the  two  national  methods  to  be  con 
sidered. 


VI 

ANGLO-AMERICAN  DIFFERENCES  (II) 


VI 

ANGLO-AMERICAN  DIFFERENCES  (II) 
THE  national  quality  of  mind  that  we 
have  been  discussing,  produced  partly  by 
geographical  facts,  but  more  largely  by  a 
more  cosmopolitan  inheritance  than  is 
the  Englishman's,  results  in  two  condi 
tions  of  American  society,  one  good  and 
one  bad,  much  more  emphatic  in  each 
direction  than  they  are  in  England. 

Civic  pride,  not  through  the  agency 
of  municipal  authorities,  but  in  the  lives 
of  individual  citizens,  is  altogether  more 
impressive  and  effective  in  America  than 
in  England.  Everywhere  is  found  a  real 
communal  activity  and  a  high  standard 
of  public  service,  social,  artistic,  and  in 
dustrial.  I  do  not  mean  that  these  things 
are  not  to  be  found  in  England,  but  they 
exist  there  far  less  commonly.  It  is  this, 
incidentally,  that  makes  the  Americans 


66      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

such  perfect  hosts,  not  only  in  their  own 
homes,  but  in  a  public  way.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  prevalent  sense  of  inde 
pendence  of  external  control  gives  any 
anti-social  elements  that  may  spring  up 
a  much  freer  license  than  they  have  with 
us.  Lynch-law,  for  example,  is  abhorrent 
to  every  rational  American  citizen,  but 
it  nevertheless  has  a  scope  that  would  be 
impossible  in  England. 

Then,  again,  there  is  the  matter  of 
political  graft,  if  I  may  be  forgiven  for 
speaking  of  an  abuse  which  I  hear  roundly 
denounced  by  every  American  I  meet, 
and  which  is  exposed  daily  by  the  entire 
responsible  press  of  the  country.  I  think 
that  perhaps  the  vast  natural  wealth  of 
the  land  and  the  almost  entire  absence 
of  individual  poverty  makes  money  here 
a  rather  less  rigid  public  standard  than 
it  is  with  us,  so  that  a  piece  of  official  job 
bery  may  not  have  quite  the  same  colour 
of  delinquency  in  the  minds  of  the  offend- 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  DIFFERENCES  67 

ers.  This  very  fact,  while  it  gives  an 
added  virtue  to  the  scrupulous  integrity 
that  is  the  standard  of  all  but  one  in  a 
thousand  Americans,  combines  with  the 
national  tradition  of  independence,  when 
this  latter  falls  into  excess  in  the  mind  of 
some  wrongly  disposed  thousandth  person, 
to  give  him  greater  latitude  for  his  in 
trigues  than  he  would  enjoy  with  us  in 
England.  Not,  again,  that  political  cor 
ruption  is  unknown  with  us;  far  from  it, 
though  I  believe  our  municipal  adminis 
trations  to  be  almost  uniformly  clean.  I 
wish  I  could  deny  that  they  are  often 
uncommonly  stupid. 

This  generalized  difference  in  the  two 
social  and  political  expressions  is  apt  to 
result  in  a  certain  misunderstanding  on 
both  sides  in  the  minds  of  the  shallower 
thinkers.  Ill-informed  people  in  England 
sometimes  think  of  American  life  as  being 
far  more  coloured  than  it,  in  fact,  is  by 
an  almost  violent  self-consideration  —  a 


68      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

travesty  in  prospect  of  the  civic  sense  of 
which  I  have  spoken,  and  by  official  self- 
interest  —  a  corresponding  travesty  of 
these  occasional  but  not  too  rigorously 
controlled  lapses  in  public  standards.  I 
will  say  no  more  of  these  than  to  observe 
that  it  is  the  concern  of  every  English 
man  who  has  had  the  privilege  of  any 
direct  experience  of  American  life  to  cor 
rect  so  misguided  an  impression  wherever 
he  finds  it  at  home.  He  knows  that  among 
the  great  majority  of  American  people 
there  is  an  earnest  desire  to  understand 
and  profit  by  external  influences,  and  a 
profound  detestation  of  public  irregularity 
with  a  determination  to  abolish  it.  On 
the  other  hand  Americans  are  sometimes 
apt  to  think  of  the  English  as  being  a 
little  indecisive  in  handling  their  affairs, 
without  realizing  to  the  full  the  sensitive 
ness  of  our  political  machinery  to  many 
conflicting  currents  of  popular  opinion. 
The  problem  of  Ireland  is  a  very  good 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  DIFFERENCES  69 

example.  This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss 
the  long  and  tragic  Irish  difficulty  in  de 
tail.  But  at  least  I  may  say  that  on  the  spot 
it  presents  itself  with  perplexing  confu 
sion  of  issues  altogether  uncomprehended 
when  it  is  considered  at  a  distance  of  three 
or  four  thousand  miles,  and  when  it  is  not 
seldom  presented  by  men  whose  motives 
are  not  wholly  those  of  blameless  patriot 
ism.  There  is  no  intelligent  man  or 
woman  in  England  who  does  not  ardently 
wish  to  see  the  Irish  question  settled,  nor 
one  that  has  not  the  deepest  sympathy 
with  Ireland's  just  national  aspirations. 
You  will  everywhere  find  perfect  good 
will  in  the  minds  of  English  thinkers  — 
especially  of  young  English  thinkers,  and 
most  young  English  people  are  thinking 
very  hard — for  the  new  generation  of 
Irishmen  that  is  working  sincerely  for  the 
new  life  of  Ireland,  but  you  will  naturally 
enough  find  little  but  impatience  with 
the  men  who  preach  a  flamboyant  gospel 


70      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  inspired  not  at 
all  by  a  filial  love  of  Ireland,  but  merely 
by  political  hatred  of  England.  We  have 
not  developed  these  intoxications  our 
selves,  and  we  do  not  admire  them  in 
others,  nor  are  they  shared  by  the  clearest 
minds  in  Irish  nationalism. 

I  wish  every  American  who  seeks  en 
lightenment  on  this  subject  would  read 
'  Sir  Edward  Carson  and  the  Ulster 
Movement,'  written  by  St.  John  Ervine, 
the  author  of  that  very  moving  play  'John 
Ferguson,'  and  himself  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  products  of  the  young  Irish  na 
tionalist  school.  From  it  may  be  learned 
how  obstinately  Ireland's  internal  reli 
gious  conflict  has  stood  in  the  way  of 
settlement,  how  shamefully  that  conflict 
has  been  exploited  by  political  adventur 
ers,  and  how  sincere  is  the  effort  that  is 
being  made  by  progressive  thought  both 
in  England  and  in  Ireland  to  remove 
the  whole  religious  question  from  contact 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  DIFFERENCES  71 

with  the  political  issue,  and  how  clear  the 
way  would  be  to  a  common  understand 
ing  if  once  this  were  done.  In  the  mean 
time,  while  I  have  often,  with  many 
thousands  of  my  countrymen,  been  dis 
tressed  and  angered  by  official  bungling 
of  the  Irish  question,  I  am  sure  that  the 
difficulty  is  by  no  means  wholly  or  even 
chiefly  due  to  any  incurable  defect  in  the 
English  character.  Taking  failure  with 
success,  we  have  on  the  whole  made  a  pretty 
good  job  of  our  dealings  by  the  peoples 
with  whom  we  have  been  associated  in 
government.  So  that  when  a  problem  per 
sists  as  Irish  settlement  has  done,  we  may 
fairly  claim  that  the  explanation  is  to  be 
sought  in  some  internal  circumstance 
beyond  our  control.  You  might  easily 
travel  for  a  week  through  England  with 
out  finding  a  single  person  who  wants  to 
withhold  home  rule  from  Ireland,  and 
you  might  as  easily  travel  as  long  through 
Ireland  without  finding  three  consecu- 


72      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

tive  people  in  agreement  as  to  the  terms 
upon  which  they  would  accept  it. 

The  truth  is  that  nations  are  wise  to 
lay  little  stress  upon  their  differences  of 
character,  since  these  upon  examination 
are  nearly  always  seen  to  result  from  lo 
cal  conditions  with  which  it  is  at  once 
idle  and  impertinent  to  quarrel.  It  is, 
indeed,  well  for  the  stranger  to  try  to 
realize  what  these  conditions  are,  for  by 
doing  this  he  will  acquire  a  friendly  tol 
erance  for  their  consequent  national  ex 
pressions  when  they  differ  from  those  to 
which  he  is  used  in  his  own  country. 
Generous  criticism  is  as  wholesome  and 
necessary  a  part  of  international  as  of 
family  affairs,  being  a  normal  corrective 
in  human  nature  no  matter  on  what  scale 
it  may  be  working,  but  it  is  as  true  of 
the  relations  between  countries  as  of 
those  between  individuals  to  say  that  to 
know  all  is  to  forgive  all. 

In  considering  thus  briefly  the  differ- 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  DIFFERENCES  73 

ences  between  America  and  England,  I 
am  not,  I  need  hardly  say,  unconscious 
of  the  differences  within  the  two  countries 
themselves.  They  are  certainly  marked 
enough  in  England,  and  my  acquaintance 
with  America  makes  it  clear  that  they 
are  even  more  so  here.  The  Tynesider  is 
a  far  cry  from  the  Sussex  shepherd,  and 
the  Manchester  merchant  looks  to  an 
ideal  that  is  not  very  apparent  to  the 
Norfolk  squire,  but  a  body  of  six  men 
whose  traditions  represented,  say,  Bos 
ton,  New  York,  Chicago,  New  Orleans, 
Salt  Lake  City,  and  San  Francisco,  would 
mark  a  diversity  of  bearing  towards  pub 
lic  and  social  life  that  would  not  be  read 
ily  matched  in  England.  But  when  all 
is  said  these  domestic  distinctions  are  in 
each  case  much  more  obvious  to  a  peo 
ple  themselves  than  to  the  outside  ob 
server.  An  American  Westerner  and  an 
American  Easterner  remain  more  like 
each  other  than  any  one  else  in  the  world, 


74      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

and  the  average  foreigner  would  know 
at  once  that  either  was  an  American  with 
out  being  able  to  say  within  a  thousand 
miles  where  he  hailed  from,  just  as  most 
people  here  would  as  readily  believe  that 
I  come  from  Cornwall  as  from  Cumber 
land,  when  in  fact  I  come  from  neither. 
The  salient  truth  remains  that  between 
the  American  people  as  a  whole  and  the 
English  people  as  a  whole  there  is  a  pro 
found  community  of  constitutionalmethod 
and  ideal,  and  at  the  same  time  certain 
general  differences  of  national  character 
and  approach.  We  have  seen  to  what 
splendid  end  that  community  might  be 
exercised  in  the  present  affairs  of  the 
world,  and  how  Lincoln  stands  as  a  fit 
ting  and  sufficient  symbol  through  which 
this  end  may  define  itself.  We  have,  fur 
ther,  considered  some  of  the  more  im 
portant  of  those  differences,  and  we  may 
now  see  how  Lincoln  may  serve,  too,  as 
a  sufficient  symbol  in  the  imagination  of 
both  peoples  for  the  reconciling  of  these. 


VII 
LINCOLN  AS  RECONCILER 


VII 

LINCOLN  AS  RECONCILER 
I  HAVE  already  said  that  the  only  coun 
try  outside  America  that  could  conceiv 
ably  have  produced  Abraham  Lincoln  in 
his  essential  character  is  England,  and 
that  he  is,  perhaps,  the  only  figure  of  uni 
versal  significance  in  history,  apart  from 
her  own  heroes,  that  England  would  have 
satisfied  her  own  best  ideals  in  producing. 
Before  inquiring  how  those  differences 
between  the  two  nations  that  we  have 
been  discussing  may  be  reconciled  in  the 
example  of  this  man,  it  will  be  well  to 
analyze  a  little  more  closely  the  elements 
of  his  character. 

It  is  reasonably  clear  that  the  stock 
from  which  Lincoln  came  was  of  Eng 
lish  descent.  In  any  case  he  was  intellec 
tually  and  spiritually  a  son  of  the  Revo 
lution  of  1776.  An  American  of  pure 


7  8      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

national  strain  very  aptly  described  this 
Revolution  to  me  the  other  day  as  the 
refusal  of  a  community  of  English  gen 
tlemen  to  have  their  liberties  interfered 
with  by  a  meddlesome  German  poten 
tate.  It  is  a  revolution  that  has  the 
whole-hearted  admiration  of  every  free 
dom-loving  Englishman  to-day,  who  rec 
ognizes  in  it  a  cause  which  is  his  own, 
one  for  which  he  would  have  proudly 
stood.  Lincoln's  political  inheritance  was 
of  virgin  American  quality,  but  it  flowed 
in  the  finest  English  tradition.  His  in 
stinctive  discovery  of  the  great  principle 
of  individual  liberty  within  national  unity 
was  as  surely  the  fruit  of  his  own  spirit 
and  his  personal  and  national  environ 
ment  as,  shall  we  say,  Miss  Amy  Low 
ell's  vision  of  flowers  in  a  summer  gar 
den  is  her  own  direct  creation.  But  just 
as  the  poets  for  five  hundred  years,  back 
to  and  beyond  Chaucer,  had  sung  this 
same  vision  before  it  was  newly  revealed 


LINCOLN  AS  RECONCILER      79 

to  Miss  Lowell,  so  the  guiding  principle 
of  Lincoln's  character  had  been  perme 
ating  the  life  of  one  people  more  domi- 
nantly  than  that  of  any  other  for  genera 
tions  when  Lincoln's  nation  was  born, 
and  that  people  was  the  English. 

Politically,  then,  in  the  highest  sense, 
Lincoln  stood  for  an  idea  towards  which 
our  English  national  purpose  has  always 
been.  And  it  is  not  fanciful  to  see  in  the 
habit  of  his  early  pioneer  days  much  that 
would  shape  him  to  a  further  kinship. 
No  English  traveller  through  Middle- 
Western  America  can  fail  to  be  impressed 
by  a  curious  natural  affinity  between  this 
landscape  and  his  own.  There  are  differ 
ences  and  the  parallel  need  not  be  too 
precise,  but  no  Yorkshire  dalesman  or 
Oxfordshire  yeoman  would  have  been  in 
any  perplexity  in  those  days  had  he  been 
called  upon  to  face  the  land  and  home 
stead  problems  of  Indiana  or  Kentucky. 
They  would  have  been  natural  enough 


80      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

to  him,  and  he  would  have  turned  to 
them  as  readily  as  his  own  fathers  did  to 
theirs  on  their  fells  and  plains.  And  among 
these  vast  prairies  and  wooded  expanses 
he  would  have  worked  in  an  environ 
ment  to  which  he  was  no  stranger.  The 
human  eye  cannot  reach  beyond  the  hori 
zon,  and  the  little  orbit  of  a  man's  daily 
labour  in  primitive  conditions  is  as  wide 
in  a  small  island  as  in  a  mighty  conti 
nent.  *»  It  was  a  mysterious  providence  that 
led  those  English  settlers  to  a  country 
where  the  potent  influence  of  the  soil  and 
nature's  wearing  should  be  so  strangely 
like  that  in  which  their  ancestry  had 
moved.  To  see  Lincoln  moulding  him 
self  in  the  quiet  and  unsensational  land 
scape  of  his  homeland  is  to  remember 
another  figure  so  little  like  him  in  ap 
pearance,  and  the  long,  lonely  fens  among 
which  Cromwell  brooded  upon  his  coun 
try's  destiny  until  he  too  rose  from  middle 
age  to  the  direction  of  a  troubled  people. 


LINCOLN  AS  RECONCILER      81 

Then  from  this  rough  tutoring,  in  so 
close  intimacy  with  the  earth,  where  Na 
ture  spoke  in  no  spectacular  voice  and  a 
man's  ears  had  to  be  intent  to  catch  her 
secrets,  Lincoln  turned  for  his  profession 
to  the  law.  It  was  a  law  devised  in  the 
light  of  new  experiences  and  argued  of 
ten  less  by  precedent  than  by  a  rough- 
and-ready  but  clear  sense  of  justice  as  it 
appeared  to  men  who  were  building  a 
new  society.  But  its  foundation  was  the 
English  legal  code,  and  in  making  equity 
its  chief  aim  it  was  following  an  exam 
ple  that,  however  sadly  it  may  at  times 
have  been  abused,  has  been  the  proud 
ideal  of  every  English  court  from  the 
beginning.  '  Do  always  all  that  you  can 
to  dissuade  your  client  from  a  suit/  was 
Lincoln's  counsel  in  later  life  to  a  novice, 
and  the  administration  of  law  on  the 
Illinois  circuit  round  which  he  travelled 
by  buggy  with  his  fellow-pleaders  and 
the  judges  was  honourably  impatient  of 


82       THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

nice  technical  quibbles.  It  was  the  com 
mon  purpose  as  far  as  possible  to  adjust 
quarrels  in  the  light  of  plain  reason  and 
fair  dealing,  and  although  the  court 
rooms  were  often  oddly  unimposing  they 
were  not  stuffy  with  the  sophistries  of 
more  august  assemblies.  Lincoln,  and  a 
good  many  of  the  others,  wanted  not 
merely  to  win  a  case,  but  to  establish  a 
just  one.  The  evasion  of  truth  by  quick 
ness  of  wit  had  no  attraction  for  them, 
and  they  reckoned  a  man's  reputation  to 
depend  more  upon  the  honesty  of  his 
clients  than  upon  any  gift  for  making 
the  great  appear  the  lesser  reason.  In 
short,  Lincoln  was  engaged  in  giving 
simple  and  practical  effect  to  the  very 
spirit  of  English  law,  unobscured  by  the 
pedantries  of  dullards  or  the  nimble  equiv 
ocations  of  rogues  by  which  it  is  so  often 
betrayed  in  practice,  and  with  which  it  has 
become  encrusted.  In  these  courts  Black- 
stone's  Commentaries,  gospel  as  they  were, 


LINCOLN  AS  RECONCILER      83 

did  not  absolve  you  from  the  duty  of  under 
standing  men  and  using  your  experience. 
Here,  then,  is  a  man  peculiarly  equipped 
by  circumstance  for  focussing  the  Amer 
ican  and  the  English  imagination  in  one 
point.  His  intense  communal  feeling,  de 
rived  both  in  his  pride  in  the  Revolu 
tion  from  which  his  national  entity  came 
and  from  his  life  in  the  closely  intimate 
society  of  the  pioneer  States  where  he 
matured,  combined  with  his  broad  legal 
tradition,  learned  at  English  sources,  to 
make  him  always  loyal  at  once  to  the 
best  qualities  that  we  have  seen  to  inform 
the  American  ideal  of  private  and  public 
service  on  the  one  hand,  and  that  of  Eng 
land  on  the  other.  If  there  has  been  a 
slight  tendency  in  American  life  to  un 
derrate  the  importance  of  influences  out 
side  the  immediate  community,  he  would 
have  been  the  first  to  detect  the  mistake, 
and  if  we  in  England  are  sometimes  too 
easily  swayed  by  irresponsible  voices,  there 


84      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

is  no  completer  example  to  be  found  for 
our  correction  than  in  the  steadfastness 
of  Lincoln. 

But  in  the  splendid  civic  pride  of 
American  citizens  and  our  own  demand 
that  government  shall  always  be  directly 
and  immediately  sensible  of  sincere  pop 
ular  feeling,  he  would  recognize  two 
principles  rich  in  possibilities  of  good 
will  and  mutual  enlightenment.  And  so 
he  adds  this  further  service  to  the  two 
races,  showing  us  in  one  character  the 
perfect  choice  in  the  things  wherein  we 
differ,  as  he  has  shown  us  in  that  charac 
ter  the  consummation  of  the  idea  for 
which  we  have  always  stood  in  common. 

The  spirit  of  Lincoln  moves  in  the 
wisest  counsels  of  us  both  to-day,  and  the 
reflection  is  full  of  hope  for  the  future  of 
the  world.  I  propose  now  to  speak  briefly 
of  the  relation  of  history  to  art,  and  to  ask 
how  the  artist  can  help  in  adding  signifi 
cance  to  the  word  of  the  historian. 


VIII 

HISTORY  AND  ART 


VIII 

HISTORY  AND  ART 
I  WAS  recently  discussing  art  and  philos 
ophy  with  one  of  the  ablest  of  the 
younger  school  of  Glasgow  philosophers. 
I  was  trying  to  explain  creative  processes 
from  the  artist's  point  of  view,  and  he 
to  give  them  philosophical  interpretation. 
We  were  spending  a  day  together  on  the 
Grampian  Hills,  and  now  and  then  our 
talk  would  turn  off  from  the  subject  that 
mostly  preoccupied  us.  And  he  told  me 
a  story,  with  reference  to  nothing  in 
particular,  but  having,  it  seemed  to  me, 
a  very  direct  bearing  upon  the  whole 
question  of  the  function  of  art.  It  was 
this : 

An  eminent  nerve  specialist  was  treat 
ing  a  young  English  officer  for  shell- 
shock  at  the  end  of  the  war.  There  was 
no  apparent  physical  ailment,  but  the 


88      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

patient  suffered  from  complete  loss  of 
memory  of  everything  in  his  life  before 
the  moment  when  he  recovered  con 
sciousness  in  the  hospital,  and  from  deep 
and  continuous  mental  depression.  When 
other  treatments  had  wholly  failed,  the 
doctor  tried  hypnosis,  with  this  result. 
In  the  hypnotic  state  the  patient  recon 
structed  the  circumstances  of  his  casualty 
and  related  them  in  detail.  He  had  been 
an  artilleryman  in  command  of  a  battery. 
In  the  midst  of  a  critical  action  one  of 
his  men  had  made  a  blunder  that  gravely 
imperilled  the  lives  of  them  all.  He  was 
himself  a  man  of  equable  temper,  but  he 
told  with  great  animation  how  in  a  state 
of  high  nervous  tension  he  had  turned 
upon  the  offender  with  a  fury  of  reproof 
in  his  mind.  At  that  moment  a  shell  had 
burst  at  his  feet,  and  he  knew  no  more 
until  he  came  back  to  life  with  a  blank 
past  and  in  a  state  of  acute  wretchedness. 
When  he  came  to  consciousness  from 


HISTORY  AND  ART  89 

hypnosis  after  telling  this  narrative,  he 
was  a  cured  man.  His  natural  buoyancy 
was  restored  at  once  and  completely,  and 
his  memory  rapidly  recovered  nor  did 
the  trouble  return. 

The  specialist's  explanation,  and  it  was 
one  with  which  every  artist  will  agree, 
was  that  it  was,  so  to  speak,  a  case  of  an 
unresolved  action  of  the  mind.  At  a  time 
of  acute  mental  strain  the  gunner  had 
suddenly  been  thrown  by  an  accident  into 
a  mood  of  extreme  anger,  and  the  mood 
was  violently  arrested  in  mid-career.  From 
that  moment  it  had  remained  in  suspense, 
and  the  loss  of  memory  occasioned  by 
the  shock  of  the  explosion  had  made  it 
impossible  for  him  to  complete  the  arc 
in  his  mind.  The  physiological  cause  of 
the  loss  of  memory  is  not  to  the  present 
point,  but  it  was  precisely  this  unresolved 
action  of  the  mind  that,  acting  as  a  con 
tinual  irritant,  produced  in  his  brain  the 
sickness  of  something  in  a  trap.  Under 


go      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

hypnosis  the  suspended  mental  wave  had 
spent  itself,  and  normal  functioning  re 
turned. 

In  this  illustration  is  an  epitome  of 
the  artist's  activity.  The  sole  cause  of  the 
creation  of  art  is  the  imperative  necessity 
in  some  minds  for  the  exact  realization 
through  definite  and  concrete  forms  of 
something  that  in  its  natural  expression 
is  not  completely  intelligible.  The  art 
ist's  mind  is  restless  always  in  the  pres 
ence  of  the  confused  medley  of  life,  and 
achieves  composure  only  in  reducing  se 
lected  volumes  of  this  chaos  to  shape  and 
order.  That  is,  in  fact,  what  creation 
means.  And  while  he  does  this  in  the 
first  place  simply  to  satisfy  his  own  needs, 
his  art  will  give  a  measure  of  the  same 
satisfaction  to  other  men  who  come  in 
contact  with  it. 

The  material  from  which  the  artist 
thus  selects  for  his  purpose  passes  before 
him  in  many  kinds,  all  of  them  more 


HISTORY  AND  ART  91 

or  less  indefinite  and  haphazard  in  their 
natural  expression.  It  may  be  the  earth 
and  its  seasonal  changes,  or  it  may  be  the 
flux  of  society,  or  it  may  be  the  pages  of 
history  —  be  it  of  a  nation  or  of  a  man 
—  or  it  may  be  the  complex  of  an  indi 
vidual  character.  It  does  not  matter  how 
exhaustively  he  may  use  any  of  these;  it 
is  the  using  of  any  part  of  one  ot  them 
significantly  that  gives  peace  to  the  pur 
pose  of  his  mind.  It  is  in  a  very  literal 
sense  that  the  artist  is  called  one  who 
sees,  the  seer. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  history  is  as 
readily  to  the  artist's  hand  as  the  daily 
current  of  life  under  his  own  observa 
tion.  The  aim  of  the  scientific  historian 
is  to  present  a  complete  and  minutely 
precise  record  of  a  period  or  of  a  man's 
career  as  the  case  may  be.  He  can  never, 
in  the  nature  of  the  case,  be  wholly  suc 
cessful  in  this  aim;  it  is  interesting  to 
reflect  on  how  many  stout  volumes  it 


92      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

would  take  to  give  an  exhaustive  account 
of  a  single  year  in  the  most  uneventful 
life.  But,  none  the  less,  his  historical 
standard  is  clear.  Events  and  influences 
are  not  to  be  ignored  because  they  are 
apparently  casual,  and  the  insignificant 
must  stand  side  by  side  with  matters  of 
main  interest,  and  rightly  so,  since  his 
office  is  to  record  and  not  to  select  or 
distinguish.  Indeed,  one  recognizes  the 
true  spirit,  by  reversal,  in  the  historical 
examiner  who  set  the  question,  'What 
do  you  know  of  Canute  ?  Omit  all  refer 
ence  to  the  waves  incident/ 

When  the  artist  turns  to  history,  then, 
he  will  find,  as  it  were,  a  photographic 
assembly  of  facts,  and  his  imagination 
will  feel  the  old  necessity  of  arranging 
some  of  these  into  self-contained  and  suf 
ficient  forms.  He  does  not  compete  with 
the  historian,  and  it  is  pointless  to  debate 
which  of  the  two  achieves  the  greater 
truth.  The  artist  may,  indeed,  manipu- 


HISTORY  AND  ART  93 

late  some  of  the  historian's  facts,  thereby, 
perhaps,  distressing  a  few  narrowly  sci 
entific  minds.  But  it  is  hard  to  deny 
that,  in  ordering  history  to  what  seems 
to  him  a  truer  significance  than  can  be 
seen  in  the  chance  of  actual  events,  he 
often  attains  the  greater  verity.  Who, 
for  example,  does  not  understand  the 
scholar  gipsy  more  profoundly  in  the  art 
of  Matthew  Arnold  than  in  the  chroni 
cle  of  Glanvil,  and  in  turn  more  fully  in 
Glanvil's  own  simple  record  than  he 
would  have  done  by  direct  observation 
of  that  vagrant  Oxford  life  ?  And  just  as 
it  is  the  artist's  business  not  to  write  his 
tory  over  again,  but  to  make  spiritual 
inferences  from  history  already  written 
and  vital  projections  of  this  or  that  theme 
lying  unmoulded  in  the  historian's  page, 
so  is  the  case  with  records  of  individual 
character.  The  artist  makes  no  bid  for 
biographical  honours.  He  does  not  seek 
to  tell  either  the  whole  story  of  a  man  or 


94      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

the  manifold  aspects  of  his  nature.  Hec 
uba  doubtless  was  a  genial  gossip  on  quiet 
Trojan  evenings,  and  Lorenzo  was,  likely 
enough,  a  shrewd  young  man  of  business 
promise  on  the  Rialto,  but  these  were 
no  concerns  of  Euripides  and  Shakespeare. 
They  knew  that  the  obligation  of  the 
artist  was  not  to  say  all  things,  but  to  in 
tensify  the  meaning  of  some,  an  obliga 
tion  that  seemed  to  them  to  be  the  one 
of  supreme  honour  in  the  province  of 
the  mind.  If  these  things  were  not  so, 
Boswell  would  be  incontestably  the  great 
est  master  in  the  English  tongue,  which 
he  certainly  is  not  for  all  he  is  a  very 
considerable  fellow,  indeed. 

When,  therefore,  from  the  story  of  a 
man  or  an  epoch  there  emerges  some 
dominating  idea,  it  is  almost  certain  that 
sooner  or  later  the  artists  will  come  along 
and  proceed  to  isolate  that  idea  from  all 
irrelative  things  that  surround  it  in  his 
tory,  and  re-create  it  in  a  form  of  its 


HISTORY  AND  ART  95 

own  urging.  They  may  find  a  dozen  dif 
ferent  interpretations  of  it,  but  each  will 
have  its  unmistakable  and  durable  mean 
ing.  If  it  is  pleaded  against  them  that 
Hamlet  is  strangely  familiar  with  the 
Elizabethan  playhouse  for  a  Danish  prince 
of  the  twelfth  century,  or  that  Abraham 
Lincoln,  while  he  was  many  things,  was 
never  a  ship's  captain,  they  take  no  heed, 
for  they  know  better  than  that.  And 
truly  it  were  as  wise  to  blame  Whitman 
for  figuring  his  hero  thus  as  to  blame 
Mr.  Shaw,  for  instance,  for  editing  his 
tory  to  suit  his  presentation  of  Caesar  and 
Cleopatra. 

The  American  Civil  War,  with  Lin 
coln  as  its  protagonist  and  the  pioneer 
days  as  a  background,  has,  it  seems  to  me, 
more  than  any  other  story  of  the  modern 
world,  breaking  through  all  its  confusion, 
just  the  clear-cut  significance  upon  which 
the  artist's  imagination  loves  to  seize.  I 
Cannot  but  hope  that  some  American 


96      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

poet  will  presently  see  in  this  the  fit  occa 
sion  for  the  first  native  epic  of  the  later 
English-speaking  race,  and  the  hope  is 
encouraged  by  such  an  admirable  little 
masterpiece  as  Mr.  Lee  Masters's  '  Spoon 
River  Anthology/  In  the  meantime  the 
central  figure  of  Lincoln  himself  has 
already  grown  in  definition  in  the  work 
of  many  artists,  who,  in  so  far  as  this  is 
true,  have  taken  their  part  in  furthering 
the  wider  understanding  between  two 
countries  that  has  ;been  the  theme  of 
these  papers.  I  should  like  to  pass  some 
of  this  work  briefly  in  review. 


IX 

LINCOLN  AND  THE  ARTISTS 


IX 

LINCOLN  AND  THE  ARTISTS 
MY  necessarily  imperfect  knowledge  of 
later  American  literature  and  other  arts 
will  make  omissions  from  this  note  in 
evitable.  Of  painting  in  particular  I  can 
say  nothing  in  this  connection,  since  I 
do  not  know  of  any  painter  who  has 
aimed  at  interpretation  of  Lincoln.  Should 
there  be  any,  he  will  compete  with  the 
photographer,  who  did  his  work  very 
exhaustively,  as  little  as  the  writer  does 
with  the  historian  or  biographer.  I  am 
the  happy  possessor  of  a  charming  col 
oured  lithograph  which  I  take  to  be  con 
temporary  with  Lincoln.  It  is  no  more 
than  a  simple  and  direct  piece  of  repre 
sentation,  but  it  has  an  attractive  homely 
grace  and  meaning  much  like  that  of  the 
Rogers  groups  that  are  sure  presently  to 
regain  the  favour  that  they  have  lost. 


ioo     THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

They  are  unassuming,  but  they  have  the 
quiet  native  distinction  of  a  flowered  sam 
pler  or  early  Staffordshire  pottery.  The 
ordinary  run  of  popular  Lincoln  prints 
and  engravings  have  little  meaning,  be 
ing  manufactured  merely  to  supply  a 
market  and  having  no  relation  to  art. 

I  suppose  a  pretty  considerable  anthol 
ogy  of  Lincoln  poems  might  be  made, 
but  only  three  or  four  have  impressed 
me  deeply.  This  is  natural  enough,  since 
the  influence  of  a  great  character  will 
always  work  slowly  upon  the  poets  of 
his  own  people,  who  have  to  disentangle 
essentials  from  the  small  talk  of  tradi 
tion.  And  the  rest  of  the  world  is  likely 
to  wait  upon  their  announcement  of  the 
imaginative  appeal  that  they  at  length 
discover,  although  in  rare  instances  a 
stranger  is  betimes  with  them.  After 
Whitman's  magnificent  threnody,  writ 
ten  out  of  a  deep  personal  sorrow,  I  do 
not  know  of  anything  strikingly  memo- 


LINCOLN  AND  THE  ARTISTS     lai 

rable  until  our  own  time.  Then  we  have 
a  few  poems,  small  in  compass,  but  en 
tirely  adequate  to  their  theme  and  in 
one  or  two  instances  nobly  so.  Mr.  Percy 
MacKaye's  *  Centenary  Ode '  has  a  gen 
erous  sweep  and  several  touches  of  rev 
elation,  but  its  scheme  and  the  occasion 
made  the  highest  success  very  difficult. 
It  remains  a  poet's  tribute  if  not  wholly 
a  poet's  achievement.  Mr.  Edwin  Mark- 
ham,  too,  worthily  adds  his  word  of  last 
ing  witness  in  his  'Lincoln/  I  am  sure 
that  there  are  others  which  I  have  not 
been  fortunate  enough  to  find,  but  the 
two  poems  that  have  most  moved  me 
are  Mr.  Vachel  Lindsay's  *  Abraham  Lin 
coln  Walks  at  Midnight'  and  Mr.  Lee 
Masters's  'Ann  Rutledge.'  If  no  other 
commemoration  had  been  made  by  Amer 
ican  poetry  than  these,  the  muse  of  Lin 
coln's  country  would  not  have  failed  him 
in  her  office.  Mr.  Lindsay,  with  hardly 
a  false  accent,  achieves  that  most  diffi- 


IO-2      TUE  WO&LD  EMANCIPATOR 

cult  of  all  things  in  verse  to-day,  the 
grand  style.  There  is  no  touch  of  rhet 
oric  in  his  poem,  but  it  takes  us  easily 
into  a  world  of  heroic  stature,  and  its 
speech  is  that  of  high  ceremonial  with 
no  word  of  affectation.  It  is  a  happy 
thing  that  the  poet  who  could  create  this 
perfect  challenge  should  come  from  Lin 
coln's  own  town.  Springfield,  Illinois, 
will  some  day  be  aware  of  a  new  laurel 
in  its  wreath.  Mr.  Masters's  poem  on 
'Ann  Rutledge*  in  his  Spoon  River  book 
has  a  poignancy  akin  to  that  of  one  of 
Lincoln's  own  phrases.  Of  exquisite  ten 
derness,  it  has  that  last  simplicity  of  art 
which  it  is  impossible  to  perceive  with 
out  being  but  a  little  way  from  tears.  Of 
slighter  rank,  but  having  something  of 
the  same  quality,  is  Mr.  Masters's  other 
Lincoln  poem  in  the  same  book,  *  Han 
nah  Armstrong.'  To  read  the  poems  that 
I  have  named  is  in  each  case  to  be  quick 
ened  in  understanding  of  some  perma- 


LINCOLN  AND  THE  ARTISTS      103 

nence  or  another  in  Lincoln's  spiritual 
being.  No  new  thing  is  said,  but  always 
a  new  emphasis  is  made,  a  new  and  re 
vealing  image  created. 

Of  the  presentation  of  Lincoln  in  fic 
tion  I  am  not  competent  to  speak,  hav 
ing  always  been  a  culpably  poor  reader 
of  contemporary  fiction.  But  the  sculp 
tors  have  done  well  by  our  hero.  The 
great  Saint-Gaudens  statue  at  Chicago  is 
probably  more  popular  than  any  other, 
and  for  very  good  reasons.  It  has  no  rare 
subtlety  nor  original  invention,  but  it  is 
in  the  heroic  manner  without  any  touch 
of  ridiculous  solemnity.  It  is,  in  the 
right  way,  impressive.  Splendidly  placed 
—  with  a  device  by  which  it  may  be 
seen  by  night  as  well  as  day  —  it  pre 
sents  to  the  public  imagination  a  figure 
worthily  in  the  great  tradition  of  the  fo 
rum.  It  aims  at  none  of  the  more  mov 
ing  human  qualities,  but  it  succeeds  in 
the  venture  of  suggesting  that  our  kind 


IO4     THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

may  be  titanic.  Official  art  in  its  abuses 
falls  often  enough  into  merely  preten 
tious  mannerism,  but  in  a  vigorous  state 
it  has  its  proper  use,  and  Saint-Gaudens 
has  discovered  what  this  is.  Great  talent 
is  not  the  less  admirable  in  that  it  falls 
short  of  the  mark  of  genius,  and  great 
talent  is  unquestionably  here.  One  can 
not  stand  before  this  gravely  intent  de 
sign  without  the  consciousness  that '  noth 
ing  common  was  or  mean*  in  the  man 
so  commemorated.  In  a  more  intimate, 
less  majestic  manner,  the  O'Connor  me 
morial  at  Springfield,  Illinois,  achieves 
the  same  distinction.  This  is  a  work  that 
loses  nothing  by  a  certain  modesty  of 
treatment.  It  is  the  tribute  of  an  artist 
seeking  honourably  to  express  his  own 
measure  of  understanding  without  being 
tempted  to  assume  the  inherent  great 
ness  of  his  subject.  The  Borglum  statue 
I  have  not  seen,  but  from  photographs 
I  gather  that  it  has  unusual  power  and 


LINCOLN  AND  THE  ARTISTS     105 

imagination.  Again  there  is  a  revelation 
of  that  in  character  which  had  not  been 
quite  so  clear  before. 

But  Lincoln  has  inspired  one  sculptor 
to  a  work  of  indisputable  genius.  Once 
more  it  may  be  necessary  to  remind  our 
selves  that  the  artist  is  not  in  competi 
tion  with  photographic  record,  or  even 
with  visual  memory.  These  have  their 
own  precise  value,  and  no  reasonable  be 
ing  underrates  them.  George  Gray  Bar 
nard's  statue  in  Cincinnati,  now  stand 
ing  in  replica  in  England  at  Manchester, 
is  a  masterpiece  of  creative  interpreta 
tion  of  which  every  American  should  be 
immensely  proud.  The  factions  that  be 
set  the  progress  of  every  art  are  healthy, 
and  out  of  them  always  comes  rich  and 
original  work.  Such  tokens  of  develop 
ment,  however,  commonly  have,  for  all 
their  individual  worth,  some  sign  of  the 
quarrel  in  which  they  were  engendered. 
But  now  and  then  a  man  comes  along 


io6     THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

who  is  apparently  oblivious  of  all  the 
feuds,  and  working  in  the  clear  line  of 
descent  from  a  great  and  long  tradition 
is  able  to  invest  his  art  with  entirely  new 
and  arresting  significance.  A  notable  ex 
ample  is  to  be  found  in  our  modern  Eng 
lish  school  of  painting.  Invention,  sin 
cerity,  fearlessness,  all  these  qualities 
abound  in  it,  and  a  dozen  men  are  pro 
ducing  work  that  will  stimulate  the  whole 
future  of  painting  in  the  country,  and  in 
itself  prove  to  be  of  durable  value.  But 
much  of  it  is  a  little  aggressive,  a  little 
touched  by  anger,  to  its  injury.  There 
is  in  it  a  hint  of  some  resentment  that 
was  partly  its  governing  impulse.  And 
then  you  find  an  artist  like  Eric  Ken- 
nington,  drawing  very  simply  and  directly 
as  though  he  had  never  heard  of  the  pas 
sionate  disputes  ringing  through  the  stu 
dios,  and  by  sheer  intensity  and  natural 
instinct  absorbing  our  attention  as  surely 
as  do  the  older  masters. 


LINCOLN  AND  THE  ARTISTS     107 

And  so  it  is  with  Mr.  Barnard.  His 
Lincoln  statue  is  modern  and  personal 
enough,  too  modern  and  personal,  per 
haps,  for  those  who  see  in  tradition  not 
a  discipline,  but  merely  an  example  to  be 
copied.  Yet  it  is  as  truly  informed  by  tra 
dition  as  are  the  new  enchantments  of 
the  Russian  ballet  and  Thomas  Hardy's 
novels.  In  technique  it  frankly,  and,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  refreshingly,  discards  some 
of  the  more  obvious  conventions,  but  in 
every  basic  principle  of  the  art  it  is  as  pro 
found  and  as  exact  as  are  the  creations 
of  Michael  Angelo  himself.  By  the  sim 
plest  means  the  artist  has  given  us  his 
personal  vision  of  Lincoln,  not  hesitating 
to  make  his  own  example  in  such  details 
of  design  as  the  placing  of  the  feet  and 
the  folding  of  the  great,  potent  hands, 
and  at  the  same  time  he  has  been  con 
tent  to  apply  himself  to  the  closest  pos 
sible  verisimilitude.  Nothing  could  be 
more  instructive  in  the  ways  of  plastic  art 


io8     THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

than  to  examine,  as  I  have  done,  this  work 
of  profoundly  imaginative  genius  point 
by  point  in  relation  to  Leonard  Volk's 
life-mask.  It  is  to  realize  anew  how 
splendidly  the  truth  of  creative  vision  has 
its  roots  in  the  truth  of  reality. 

And  so  the  artists,  too,  in  their  lone 
liness  are  public  servants.  They  help  daily 
to  define  the  symbols  around  which  our 
thought  and  desire  may  be  expressed ; 
they  give  shape  to  dreams,  bringing  them 
to  the  practical  uses  of  living.  If  Lincoln 
shall  stand  as  the  figure  in  which  an  in 
tellectual  and  spiritual  alliance  between 
America  and  England  shall  be  articulate 
to  the  immeasurable  good  of  mankind, 
the  artists  will  not  be  unhonoured  in  the 
event. 


X 

AN  EPILOGUE 


X 

AN  EPILOGUE 

IT  is  in  the  shades.  On  a  late  spring  evening  of 
the  year  19 — ,  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE  is  seated 
on  a  fallen  tree,  by  the  edge  of  a  small  woodland 
stream,  ^he  modern  -prophets  of  spiritualistic 
science ',  who  announce  personal  continuity  with  so 
pure  a  faith)  might  take  comfort  from  the  Poet's 
occupation ;  for  as  the  water  trickles  and  gyrates 
above  the pebbles ',  sending  up  here  and  there  little 
spirals  of  sand,  and  catches  the  shadows  from 
early  leaves  overhead,  he  considers  it  all  with  the 
old  intentness,  murmuring  in  an  undertone  familiar 
snatches  of  a  philosophy  that  remains  unresolved. 
And  as  he  considers  anew  his  sermons  in  stones , 
books  in  the  running  brooks ',  and  tongues  in  trees , 
a  fellow  shade,  of  the  true  spectral  height,  ap 
proaches  him  through  the  wood.  A  look  of  pleased 
recognition  comes  into  SHAKESPEARE'S  face,  and 
he  speaks. 

SHAKESPEARE.  Hullo — if  it  is  n't  Abra 
ham.  This  is  uncommonly  well  met. 

LINCOLN.  Good  evening,  Will.  I  don't 
want  to  disturb  you,  though. 


ii2      THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

SHAKESPEARE.  I  could  want  no  better 
company.  Let  us  talk.  Sit  down. 

LINCOLN  (sitting  on  the  tree-trunk}.  A 
good  tree  to  fell,  this.  There's  noth 
ing  like  it  —  the  clean  sweep,  and  the 
ring,  and  the  flying  white  wedges,  and 
then  the  whimpering  of  the  wood  and 
the  long,  drifting  fall.  That's  how  it  was 
in  Salem.  They  were  good  days. 

SHAKESPEARE.  There  were  woodmen 
in  Arden  too.  Where  have  you  been?  It 's 
thirty  years  or  more  since  I  saw  you. 

LINCOLN.  It 's  all  that  guy  Plato.  He 
will  argue.  I  met  him  just  after  I  left  you 
that  time,  and  we  got  on  to  the  slave 
question.  I  generally  let  him  talk,  but  I 
simply  could  n't  stand  that.  And  then 
there  was  no  end  to  it.  We  've  been  at  it 
ever  since.  Every  year  with  the  coming 
of  the  spring  he  grows  more  eloquent  and 
more  stupid.  This  is  his  thirtieth  season 
and  I  've  left  him  at  it.  I  could  bear  it 
no  longer.  Crazy  old  Athenian  junk. 


AN  EPILOGUE  113 

He's  as  obstinate  as  a  Sangamon  pig  too. 
I  've  made  it  perfectly  clear  to  him  over 
and  over  again.  And  he  will  stick  to  it 
that  the  highest  interests  of  a  chosen  few 
warrant  the  subjection  — 

SHAKESPEARE.  Steady,  Abraham. 
Don't  start  another  thirty  years  with  me. 
And  I  was  never  quite  all  in  with  the  mob, 
anyway,  you  know. 

LINCOLN.  No  —  that  was  the  worst  of 
you.  I  suppose  that  Elizabethan  court  was 
pretty  suffocating,  eh  ?  Could  n't  always 
say  just  what  you  liked. 

SHAKESPEARE.  I  don't  think  we 
showed  much  sign  of  suffocating.  In  fact, 
our  lungs  were  freer  than  is  common.  And 
we  said  what  we  meant.  We  were  poets. 

LINCOLN.  Then  you  didn't  really  care 
for  the  people  ? 

SHAKESPEARE.  I  loved  them --so 
much  that  I  wanted  them  to  change.  You 
loved  them,  too,  I  know.  You  liberated 
a  race.  But  you  had  no  time  to  help  to 


ii4     THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

make  them  better.  That  *s  the  real  love, 
is  n't  it  ? 

LINCOLN.  I  know.  I  could have  helped. 
It  needed  that.  I  like  your  company, 
Will.  I  don't  always  agree  with  you,  but 
we  seem  to  understand  each  other. 

SHAKESPEARE.  Why  not?  We  come 
from  the  same  stock.  You  would  have 
been  at  home  by  the  Avon. 

LINCOLN.  I  think  I  should.  Those 
plays  of  yours  were  great,  Will.  You 
know,  the  man  of  affairs,  let  him  keep 
himself  as  flexible  as  he  will  —  and  I 
tried  to  do  that  —  is  bound  to  gather 
prejudices,  even  though  they're  honest 
ones.  That 's  why  I  liked  your  plays  — 
there  were  no  prejudices  in  them.  Every 
body  had  a  chance. 

SHAKESPEARE.  It  was  my  job  to  under 
stand. 

LINCOLN.  I  know  —  it  was  splendid, 
wasn't  it — trying  to  understand  people 
instead  of  trying  to  dominate  them  ? 


AN  EPILOGUE  115 

That's  what  a  lot  of  folks  about  me  never 
could  realize  —  that  I  too  was  more  than 
half  poet  at  heart. 

SHAKESPEARE.  That 's  what  England 
gave  you. 

LINCOLN.  That  was  what  I  most 
wanted  to  do  —  to  bring  a  poet's  under 
standing  to  the  workaday  government  of 
a  nation. 

SHAKESPEARE.  That 's  what  you  are 
giving  England.  It's  good  payment. 

LINCOLN.  I  suppose  you  are  the  great 
est  Englishman. 

SHAKESPEARE.  To  my  surprise  it  is 
said  so. 

LINCOLN.  A  poet.  That  is  remark 
able. 

SHAKESPEARE.  It  is  being  suggested 
that  you  are  the  greatest  American. 

LINCOLN.  So  I  hear. 

SHAKESPEARE.  A  politician.  Even  more 
remarkable. 

LINCOLN.  And  yet,  it 's  —  what  your 


1 1 6     THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

descendants  would  call  rather  fun,  is  n't 
it?  A  simple  proposition  —  like  this.  Eng 
land —  a  poet  —  with  a  shrewd  head  for 
affairs — good  bargain  and  a  comfortable 
retirement  at  the  end.  But  a  poet  always. 
America  —  a  politician,  searching  always 
for  vision,  vision — as  the  poet  does.  We 
should  understand  each  other. 

SHAKESPEARE.  We  will  see  to  it  that 
none  stop  us. 

LINCOLN.  By  the  way  —  did  you  really 
do  so  well  out  of  those  plays  ? 

SHAKESPEARE.  I  built  as  good  a  house 
as  any  in  Stratford  out  of  them,  and  I 
took  — 

LINCOLN.  Oh,  yes,  the  trademark  of 
gentility.  I  never  thought  of  that  myself. 
That  is,  in  America  —  but  it  was  very 
natural,  Will,  and  I  like  you  the  better 
for  it.  A  good  house — yes,  I  '11  be  bound 
it  was —  By  the  way,  I  once  wrote  a 
poem.  You  never  heard  it  by  any  chance  ? 
It  was  n't  very  good. 


AN  EPILOGUE  117 

SHAKESPEARE.  No,  I  never  heard  it. 

LINCOLN.  Shall  I  repeat  it  for  you? 

SHAKESPEARE.  I  expect,  as  you  say,  it 
wasn't  very  good.  And  I  have  rather 
severe  standards.  So  many  of  my  friends 
had  a  talent  for  that  sort  of  thing. 

LINCOLN.  Eh  ?  Yes,  well,  I  dare  say 
you  are  right.  (Rising.]  Shall  you  be 
here  to-morrow? 

SHAKESPEARE.   If  you  will  come. 

LINCOLN.   Good-bye. 

SHAKESPEARE.  Till  then. 

LINCOLN  moves  away.  At  a  distance  be 
turns. 

LINCOLN.  By  the  way,  I  see  that  one  of 
your  fellows  has  made  a  play  about  me. 

SHAKESPEARE.  Indeed?  He  had  an 
eye  for  a  theme,  at  least. 

LINCOLN.  Don't  tell  any  one,  but  I 
got  a  copy  sent  across  here.  It 's  well 
enough  —  in  fact,  I  should  like  to  see  it. 
But  he  plays  the  devil  with  one  or  two 
of  my  best  speeches. 


1 1  8     THE  WORLD  EMANCIPATOR 

SHAKESPEARE.  Don't  worry,  Abraham. 
They  do  that  with  all  of  mine. 

LINCOLN  considers  this  for  a  moment :, 
and  goes  away,  leaving  SHAKESPEARE 
to  the  further  contemplation  of  bis 
stream. 


<3tbe 

CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .   A 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

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Renewals  may  be  made  4  days  priod  to  date  due. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


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